Estiu 1993

In SUMMER 1993 Carla Simón has granted us access to a decisive moment in her own life. In a difficult, painful and unique episode that would change her life forever, at just six years old she found herself orphaned and struggling to find her place in an adoptive family. The film explores this time with great sensitivity, and is peppered with details that send us right back to childhood, with all of its anxieties and unexpected twists: a time in our lives that is never all happiness, laughter and fun.
Simón, blessed with an unparalleled gift for seeing things from a child’s point of view, brings the camera down to Frida’s level, and through her eyes we come to understand her distress. It’s done very subtly, through silences, brief anecdotes, evasive glances, the odd furtive embrace and re-enactments of childish misdeeds which, fuelled by misunderstanding, could have damaging consequences for others.
Simón’s first feature is an intimate, autobiographical study of how hard it can be to fit in; portraying a child’s experience of learning to live with grief and the hard reality. SUMMER 1993 also touches in passing on another issue, although never by name: AIDS, which at the beginning of the 1990’s was still a pervasive and unmentionable fear — the director’s parents both succumbed to this pandemic. (Alfonso Rivera)