Carla Simón has spent the better part of a decade refining a cinematic language that favors the quiet tremor of a heartbeat over the roar of a spectacle. With her latest feature, Romería, the Spanish director returns to the intimate, autobiographical territory that first established her as a powerhouse of European cinema. The film, which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, is a devastatingly precise exploration of identity, displacement, and the bureaucratic cruelty of kinship.
For those following the trajectory of contemporary Spanish cinema, Romería arrives as a poignant addition to a prolific year for the region’s filmmakers. While it may not have walked away with the top prize at Cannes or the recent Goya Awards—where films like Los Domingos, Sirat, and Sorda dominated the conversation—it serves as a vital confirmation of Simón’s singular vision. It is, in every sense, the kind of film espagnol bouleversant qui fait comme un trou dans le cœur, leaving a hollow ache that lingers long after the credits roll.
The narrative centers on Marina, an 18-year-old living in Barcelona at the complete of her compulsory schooling. Marina is an adopted orphan with aspirations of studying cinema, a dream that requires her to apply for a scholarship. However, her path is blocked by a cold, administrative wall: to secure the funding, she must produce official civil status documents that prove her identity. The missing pieces of this puzzle reside not with her adoptive family, but with her biological father’s side of the family.
This bureaucratic necessity forces Marina into a physical and emotional pilgrimage. She travels to Vigo, a port city in Galicia, to confront the ghosts of her lineage and obtain the signatures of her biological grandparents. It is a journey that transforms a simple quest for paperwork into a visceral excavation of the self.
A Cinematic Lineage of Memory
To understand Romería, one must look at it as a companion piece to Simón’s previous explorations of childhood and loss. The director has built a career on the “modest style,” avoiding the stylized maximalism of contemporaries like Ruben Östlund or Paolo Sorrentino. Instead, she captures the world as it is: raw, unvarnished, and profoundly human.
The film acts as a chronological and emotional successor to Summer 1993 (Estiu 1993), which earned her the Best First Feature award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2017. While that film focused on a six-year-old girl processing the death of her parents, Romería finds the alter ego—now Marina instead of Frida—at the threshold of adulthood. Where the first film was about the initial shock of abandonment, this film is about the active search for origin.
Simón’s commitment to authenticity is further evidenced by her 2022 Golden Bear win for Alcarràs. By maintaining a naturalist approach, she allows the geography of Galicia—the mist, the salt air of Vigo, and the starkness of the Atlantic coast—to become a character in itself, mirroring Marina’s internal isolation.
The Architecture of the Search
The emotional weight of Romería is distributed across a specific sequence of realizations. Marina’s journey is not a traditional “homecoming” but rather a negotiation with people who are strangers yet possess the keys to her legal existence. The tension lies in the gap between what Marina needs (a signature) and what she desires (a sense of belonging).
The stakes are high, not just in a professional sense, but in an existential one. For an adopted child, the request for a birth certificate is rarely just about a scholarship; it is an invitation to confront the void where a biological history should be. The film meticulously tracks this evolution:
- The Catalyst: The realization that a scholarship application is impossible without verified civil documentation.
- The Journey: The transition from the urban familiarity of Barcelona to the rugged, unfamiliar terrain of Vigo.
- The Encounter: The fragile interaction with paternal grandparents who hold the power to validate her identity.
- The Resolution: The understanding that legal recognition does not always equate to emotional reconciliation.
Comparing the Works of Carla Simón
While all three of Simón’s major works deal with the periphery of society and the fragility of family bonds, they differ in their thematic focus and scale.
| Film | Core Theme | Key Setting | Major Recognition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Summer 1993 | Childhood grief & adaptation | Catalonia | Berlin First Feature Award (2017) |
| Alcarràs | Vanishing traditions & land | Rural Catalonia | Golden Bear (2022) |
| Romería | Identity & biological origins | Barcelona / Vigo | Cannes Competition Selection |
The Impact of the “Modest Style”
In an era of high-concept cinema, Simón’s refusal to sensationalize her own trauma is her greatest strength. Romería does not rely on melodramatic twists or orchestral swells to evoke emotion. Instead, it finds power in the silence between dialogue and the awkwardness of family reunions. This restraint is what makes the film so effective; it doesn’t tell the audience to perceive heartbroken—it simply presents the evidence of a heart breaking in real-time.
The film highlights a specific kind of systemic cruelty: the way the state requires “proof” of a person’s life, often ignoring the emotional wreckage caused by the process of obtaining that proof. By centering the story on a young woman wanting to study cinema, Simón also creates a meta-commentary on the act of filming itself—the desire to capture, document, and make sense of a fragmented past.
As Romería continues its festival run and moves toward wider distribution, it stands as a testament to the enduring power of the personal essay in cinema. It is a film that understands that the most profound holes in our hearts are often those created by the things we cannot find, or the people who cannot find us.
Further updates regarding the film’s theatrical release and potential awards season trajectory are expected following its upcoming screenings at regional European festivals.
Do you believe cinema is most powerful when it stays modest, or do you prefer the “competition beasts” of the festival circuit? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
