After watching Romería [+lee también:
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ficha de la película], which has just had its world premiere as part of the Official Competition at Cannes, it’s hard to believe that Spanish director Carla Simón has only made three features. After Summer 1993 [+lee también:
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entrevista: Carla Simón
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entrevista: Carla Simón
entrevista: Carla Simón
entrevista: Giovanni Pompili
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Even though the movie takes place only over five days (in July 2004), Marina’s quest to get legally recognised as part of the Piñeiro family sees her endure obstacles and revelations alike. She wants to study filmmaking, she says, and needs a scholarship. When her newfound grandad offers her an envelope full of money to cover her tuition and spare himself from dealing with the civil registry, she is not angry. Instead, Marina reacts calmly, albeit with a hint of confusion, as she tries to navigate the power field of a big, bourgeois family of strangers where the matriarch’s word is law and nobody talks about the less-than-perfect children. It just so happens that Marina’s father, Alfonso, used to be one of them before dying young.

As title cards announce the number of days spent on the northwestern Spanish coast (in Vigo), Romería keeps a visual diary of sorts; that meta-narrative framework matches the film’s narration. A female voice reads aloud short passages taken from the diary of Marina’s mother, dated from 1983 onwards: a half-used-up notebook we get a glimpse of in close-up. Sandwiched between those two narrative devices, the film’s intimate atmosphere swells and swells with rhythms guided by Garcia’s graceful performance as an alter ego or semi-fictionalised version of the director herself. The diary entries used in the film are real, and so is the story of a young filmmaker-to-be, hoping to get closer to the parents she never knew.

Romería is equally guided by the wandering gaze of the camera that stands in for Marina’s own perspective as an onlooker – observing from a safe distance, but zooming in (figuratively and literally) to take it all in, all the familial warmth and loaded silences. Simón teams up with cinematographer Hélène Louvart once again, and together, they craft the most compelling of inner worlds, where the veil between reality and wish fulfilment is almost non-existent. Yet, the Spanish filmmaker’s soft touch shapes every sequence and every cut into a quasi-magical space where anything is possible. Like on every pilgrimage, doubt and hope go hand in hand, but this Romería glows with so much warmth that it may well be the most heartfelt homecoming of the year.

Romería was produced by Elastica Films (Spain), Ventall Cinema (Germany) and Dos Soles Media (Spain). mk2 handles the film’s worldwide sales.