Five years ago, Carla Simón announced herself as a major filmmaker with Summer 1993, a supremely tender film about childhood that dealt obliquely with the Aids-related death of both this Catalan director’s parents. It won the award for Best Debut in Berlin, and, from where I was sitting, stood out as the single best film of that year.

Her follow-up, the enthralling Alcarràs, could easily win the Golden Bear this time, and it’s very unlikely anything else would be a more deserving choice. The title refers to a tiny village to the west of Barcelona, where Simón’s real-life uncles cultivate peaches. On a farm much like theirs, she has imagined a three-generation clan called the Solé family, in tribute to her late grandfather, who died quite recently in the midst of seismic agricultural change. This fading way of life, and everything that threatens the tradition of small-family farming that’s stood since the Neolithic era, is the film’s presiding theme.

As it starts, we learn that the current harvest may be the last one the Solés ever get to reap. They’ve worked this land since the Spanish Civil War, but only lived on it through a verbal agreement between grandfather Rogelio (Montse Oró) and a fellow called Old Pinyol, back in the days when business was a matter of honour, and such men kept their word. Young Pinyol (Jacob Diarte), alas, has other ideas, and will only permit the Solés to stay if they raze their orchard and install solar panels where it stood.

Some of the family are beginning to resign themselves to what feels like obligatory upheaval, but Rogelio’s son Qumet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet), who now runs the place, is the most stubborn and endlessly hard-working holdout. To some degree, he knows the writing is on the wall: for this reason, he harangues his own son Roger (rangy, restless Albert Bosch) to finish his education and find another line of work. The tensions between these two are only a small part of the picture, which throws up sibling feuds in the middle generation, sisterly complaints galore, and threatens the carefree contentment even of the youngsters.

Summer 1993 was built around an astonishing pair of child performances. While kids here get the same share of screen time as adults, Simón’s ability to coax them into the most natural acting you’ve ever seen remains extraordinary. These tykes while away the sunny afternoons with any old game, commandeering a rusted old car or hoisting each other up on the blade of a bulldozer, to Qumet’s understandable alarm.