SPANISH director Carla Simon’s film “Alcarras,” which explores the divisions ripped into a close-knit family of Catalan farmers who face eviction from their ancestral plot, won the Berlin Film Festival’s top prize last week.

Simon herself grew up on a peach farm in the village of Alcarras, and her film was made using amateur actors from that area whom she recruited at village fairs and coached into playing several generations of a family of smallholders.

The best short film was awarded to recent graduate Anastasia Veber’s “Trap,” a 20-minute portrait of the lives of young adults in Russia.

(SD-Agencies)