Romería (Drama)

Rating:

Director: Carla Simón
Producer: María Zamora
Screenwriter: Carla Simón
Cinematographer: Hélène Louvart
Composer: Ernest Pipó
Editor: Ana Pfaff,Sergio Jiménez
Production Designer: Mónica Bernuy
Costume Designer: Anna Aguilà
Key Cast: Miryam Gallego,Tristan Ulloa,Janet Novas,Marina Troncoso,Alberto Gracia,Mitch,Lucia Garcia Torras,Jose Angel Egido

Rising auteur Carla Simón’s Cannes Competition stand-out is a poignant coming-of-age tale interrogating hidden family history.

In 2004, 18-year-old orphan Marina, armed with a backpack and a camcorder, arrives in the coastal Spanish city of Vigo to meet the affluent family of her father, who died when she was just a small child. She’s there to connect with people she’s never known, to legally establish her father’s paternity so she can apply for a filmmaking scholarship and to learn more about who her dad was. But as she encounters a mix of hospitality and resistance, she begins to understand why so much of his life has been shrouded in secrecy.

With her first two features, Summer 1993 and Alcarràs (MIFF 2022), Carla Simón showed herself to be a gifted chronicler of the world of children and the unspoken dynamics of families. Romería builds on these works with another cinematic bildungsroman drawing from her own experiences. Expertly lensed by cinematographer Hélène Louvart (La Chimera, MIFF 2023), the film sets shots of the striking Galician environment against sequences deftly navigating the currents of large family gatherings and bringing back the ghosts of the past. Headlined by an impressive debut performance from Llúcia Garcia as Marina, Romería is a gorgeously subtle and naturalistic tale of becoming.

“Has a wistful, earthy glow … This is graceful, quietly intelligent filmmaking – including a touch of unsentimental magic realism.” – Time


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