Romería
In this bittersweet autofiction film, a young filmmaker travels to the Spanish coast to uncover the hidden past of her deceased parents.
An aspiring filmmaker, 18-year-old Marina, video camera in tow, takes a trip to Galicia, on Spain’s western coast, to see her late father’s family. Her aim is to obtain the necessary documents for a film school scholarship, but also to get to know her estranged relatives and her father’s life’s story. Both Marina’s mother and father died young in a way that the father’s family finds shameful. When Marina arrives, looking so much like her mother and toting her father’s youthful diaries, old wounds are reopened.
“Romería” means pilgrimage. Selected to the Main Competition at Cannes, it is the third full-length feature from director Carla Simón. Like her first film, Summer 1993 (2017) about an orphaned girl, it is based on the director’s personal experiences. And like Alcarràs (R&A 2022), winner of the Golden Bear at Berlinale, it is simultaneously an intimate depiction of a family unit and an incisive examination of Spanish society, its development, different generational views and unprocessed trauma.
Newcomer Llucía Garcia shines in the lead role in two different eras. Cinematographer Hélène Louvart, who’s also worked with Alice Rohrwacher, captures the austere beauty of rocky Galicia and the intensity of youth.
Suvi Heino (translated by Adrian Murtomäki)
Trailer
Collaboration
