Digging up family history brings up hidden secrets in Carla Simón's Romería

Simón is no stranger to exploring personal topics in her art. Her feature debut, Summer 1993, dealt directly with her childhood, when she was adopted by an aunt and uncle after her parents died in the wave of heroin and HIV/AIDS that hit Spain in the 1980s. Her previous film, Alcarràs, follows a family facing eviction despite their long history on the property, mirroring the upheaval Spain has been dealing with in recent years. In Romería, Simón again wrestles with big-picture events affecting the nation, how they in turn affect her character on a personal level, and how those changes alter her life. The movie explores two different timelines, one with Marina awkwardly making her way back to her estranged family, and the other following her mother, who speaks to Marina (and the audience) through diary entries in the early 1980s. Her voice is all we get of her until Garcia, the actress playing Marina, doubles as her mother in the past because of their uncanny likeness. It can get a little confusing as Marina’s present-day 2004 gives way to her mother’s heyday in 1983, but those hazy memories are mostly what Marina has left of her—fragments of an unclear, unfinished picture. 

If Vigo weren’t already such a gorgeous setting, cinematographer Hélène Louvart embraces the blue hues of the seaside, giving the film an oil painting-like undertone. Prolific DP Louvart has an eye for framing loneliness—in films like The Lost Daughter and La Chimera—even when characters are surrounded by people, playing up their isolation with a zoom in to a close-up as the world falls away, leaving the subject’s sad eyes as the focal point. When Marina meets her cousins and chilly relatives who cut ties with her dad long before her arrival, those subtle zooms single her out at the family gatherings as the black sheep.

Simón’s semi-autobiographical film is mournful without breaking down into sobs, tragic without twisting into melodrama. She finds a balance in Marina’s search for answers, her navigation of a family history fraught with resentment, and her eventual reconciliation with the fact that her parents were two fellow wild kids like herself who made mistakes. Each new truth unearths a new layer of tragedy, but Romería pushes Marina, and by extension Simón, to dig deeper to understand her parents and the family they are all a part of. It’s awkward and painful, yet so is solving the mystery of the previous generation.

Director: Carla Simón
Writer: Carla Simón
Starring: Llúcia Garcia, Mitch Martín, Tristán Ulloa, Celine Tyll, León Romagosa, Hans Romagosa, Marina Troncoso
Release Date: June 26, 2026