Summer 1993

Six-year-old Frida is sent from Barcelona to her uncle's family in the countryside after losing her parents. Nobody explains properly what has happened; the adults talk once she is out of the room. In the new house she shares her life with her small cousin Anna, and in time she starts to hurt her. The subject is not grief but how a six-year-old converts grief into behaviour. Frida does not cry; she probes limits, works at drawing attention and tests whether she is accepted. The film does not explain the behaviour, it shows it. The form sits at child height. The camera stands at Frida's level and the adults' conversations often fall outside the frame; the viewer hears as partially as the child does. The production is Carla Simón's own life. Her parents died of AIDS at the end of the eighties and she was sent to relatives in much the same way; the secrecy and shame in the film therefore rest on the real attitudes of the period. It is her first feature and won the best first film prize at the Berlin festival. It was submitted as Spain's Oscar entry that year. Laia Artigas plays Frida, with Bruna Cusí and David Verdaguer as her new family. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet drama told from a child's position. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events; the film offers nothing but daily detail.