Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón made her debut in the Cannes Film Festival competition on Wednesday afternoon, world premiering her latest work, Romería, to an 11-minute ovation.
Simón, directing from her own screenplay, here tells the story of Marina (Llúcia Garcia), an 18-year-old who was orphaned at a young age, and must travel to Spain’s Atlantic coast to obtain a signature for a scholarship application from the paternal grandparents she has never met. She navigates a sea of new aunts, uncles and cousins, uncertain whether she will be embraced or face resistance.
The experience stirs long-buried emotions as Marina pieces together the fragmented and often contradictory memories of the parents she barely remembers.
This is Simón’s third feature after Summer 1993 (2017) and Alcarràs (2022). The latter won the Golden Bear in Berlin and was selected as Spain’s entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar. Those films were shot in the middle of the Catalonian countryside. With Romería, she embraces her Galician roots, mixing professional and non-professional actors.
Simón has said Romería is “a film about the importance of family memory: and about how to shape your identity. When you can’t shape your identity through others, you can invent it through creation. Cinema is there for that: creating images that don’t exist.”
Ad Vitam has French distribution and mk2 is handling international sales.
