Romería

Romería - image - a film by Carla Simón
Romería - image - a film by Carla Simón
Romería - image - a film by Carla Simón
SPAIN, 2025
Romería - a film by Carla Simón
Brilliant. Makes you remember how invigorating cinema can be. There are no false notes here, no melodramatic angling for emotion. 'Romería' is at times raw and does not shy away from the cruelty people can inflict on each other, even if they are close. As in her previous work, the naturalism as a result of her formal choices keeps the film small, going for minimalism rather than grand gestures, but when Simón does take a swing she knocks it out of the park.
Graceful, quietly intelligent filmmaking.
Gripping. Rich, warm and candid. Simón has an instinctive and almost miraculous way of just immersing herself within extended freewheeling family scenes – her camera moving unobtrusively in the group, like another teenager at the party, quietly noticing everything. Part of this movie is about the perennial question which will fascinate and defeat all of us: what were our parents like before we were born? What was it like for them to be people just like us? It is at the centre of this distinctive, intelligent, sympathetic drama.
A warmly tactile, sweetly sorrowful ode to lost family. This layered, wistfully moving memory piece is sure to further boost Simón's rising profile.
A gripping, eye-catching family drama. Simón manages to subtly tease the historical and political out of the personal, as she looks back on how the social norms of the past maintain their hold over Spaniards of different generations, even in an era when the country is nominally free.
Director: Carla Simón
Cast: Llúcia Garcia, Mitch Robles, Tristán Ulloa, Janet Novás, Celine Tyll, Miryam Gallego, Janet Novás, Sara Casasnovas, José Ángel Egido
Country of Origin: Spain
CTC
Brilliant. Makes you remember how invigorating cinema can be. There are no false notes here, no melodramatic angling for emotion. 'Romería' is at times raw and does not shy away from the cruelty people can inflict on each other, even if they are close. As in her previous work, the naturalism as a result of her formal choices keeps the film small, going for minimalism rather than grand gestures, but when Simón does take a swing she knocks it out of the park.
Graceful, quietly intelligent filmmaking.
Gripping. Rich, warm and candid. Simón has an instinctive and almost miraculous way of just immersing herself within extended freewheeling family scenes – her camera moving unobtrusively in the group, like another teenager at the party, quietly noticing everything. Part of this movie is about the perennial question which will fascinate and defeat all of us: what were our parents like before we were born? What was it like for them to be people just like us? It is at the centre of this distinctive, intelligent, sympathetic drama.
A warmly tactile, sweetly sorrowful ode to lost family. This layered, wistfully moving memory piece is sure to further boost Simón's rising profile.
A gripping, eye-catching family drama. Simón manages to subtly tease the historical and political out of the personal, as she looks back on how the social norms of the past maintain their hold over Spaniards of different generations, even in an era when the country is nominally free.

OFFICIAL SELECTION - 2025 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL (In Competition)
OFFICIAL SELECTION - 2025 SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL (Official Competition)
OFFICIAL SELECTION - 2025 NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
OFFICIAL SELECTION - 2025 NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
OFFICIAL SELECTION - 2025 SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL

The eagerly anticipated new drama from Berlin Golden Bear-winning writer/director Carla Simón (Summer 1993, Alcarràs) - one of the most acclaimed filmmakers in contemporary Spanish cinema - follows an orphaned teenage girl as she meets her paternal family and reckons with her late parents’ complex and secret history.

2004. Vigo, Spain's Atlantic coast. 18-year-old Marina (Llúcia Garcia) has arrived to meet her grandparents for the first time, seeking their signature on some documents that she needs for a scholarship application. Raised by her mother’s sister, Marina is unfamiliar with the numerous aunties, uncles and cousins on the other side of her family, and is immediately confronted with a past shaped by absence and long-buried emotions, hindering her ambition to reconstruct a coherent account of her father, the love story he had with her mother, and her place in the story.

Romería - a film by Carla Simón
SPAIN, 2025
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NEW ZEALAND PREMIERE SCREENINGS
2025 NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Touring nationally, 31 July-10 September
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VICTORIA PREMIERE SCREENINGS
2025 MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
7-24 August
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