Standing up for what you believe, and believing in compassion and community, are the hallmarks of any script by Ken Loach’s collaborator Paul Laverty, who wrote last year’s ‘I, Daniel Blake’. This warm, gently rousing Spanish film is directed by Icíar Bollaín (‘Even the Rain’) and written by Laverty (Bollaín’s partner).
It tells of a young Spanish woman, Alma (Anna Castillo, a compelling lead), who determines to rescue and return to rural Spain her disturbed family’s beloved, highly symbolic olive tree – which now sits in the Düsseldorf lobby of a multinational company, whose logo it has inspired. Commentary on a changing Europe – and especially a socially and economically forlorn Spain – underpins ‘The Olive Tree’, but the human relationships are most poignant here, especially the one between Alma and her ailing grandfather.