Two different summers are being lived in parallel in the same rural town, one of the last in Spain that’s dedicated to drying tobacco. Veja de Granada is, for Nieves, who lives there, a place that suffocates her and from which she wants to escape. But, for now, she keeps entertaining herself between parties, friends and her boyfriend. Vera, a city girl spending the holidays with her grandparents, discovers a fantastic creature from a Miyazaki’s film in the middle of the fields. And everything changes.
In recent years a number of European films (directed by women) have emerged that depict a certain nostalgic vision of rurality regarding the disappearance of family agricultural trades. Of note, Le meraviglie (2014, Alice Rohrwacher) and the end honey production, Alcarràs (2022, Carla Simón) and the last peach farms, and now Secaderos and the closing of the last tobacco drying businesses in Spain. These films operate according to an opposition between modernity and tradition, which translates into a generational clash, often associated with a conflict between the city and the countryside. What Rocío Mesa adds, in this film, are the fantastic elements, in particular a magical creature brought directly from the 1980s. The result is that, unlike the other films, this portrait is made from a recollective perspective, which softens the oppositional logic and adds a deeply touching tenderness. (Ricardo Vieira Lisboa)
