Summer 1993
dir. Carla Simón · 2017
The experience of loss can profoundly shape a person's emotional world, making it difficult to find joy even in seemingly perfect circumstances.
Frida, a six-year-old girl, grapples with the loss of her mother as she moves to the countryside to live with her uncle and aunt. The film immerses viewers in her world, where the beauty of the rural landscape contrasts sharply with her internal struggles. Watching it feels like stepping into a sunlit memory, where every moment is tinged with the bittersweetness of childhood innocence and the weight of unexpressed grief.
In the Summer of 1993, Frida, a six-year-old little girl, leaves Barcelona and her grandparents for the countryside. After her father, her mother has just died of a mysterious illness. Taken in by her uncle Esteve and aunt Marga, Frida discovers her new environment, an old stone farmhouse in a mountainous area close to a dense forest. Her new "parents" prove friendly. Another good point is that they have a three-year old daughter named Anna who can become a playmate. For another child less disturbed than miserable uprooted Frida, this would be the most idyllic of stays, in other words a permanent vacation. But Frida IS disturbed and if there are undeniably good times at her new "home", there is also the unexpressed pain which makes her both feel sad and behave badly. Will Frida overcome her troubles ? Only the end of Summer will tell.
