‘Romería’ Review: Carla Simón’s Ambitious Turn Toward Memory and Distance

After two breakthrough films—one of them a Golden Bear winner in Berlin—that established her as the leading voice of a new generation of Spanish filmmakers, Carla Simón arrived to the 2025 Cannes competition with her biggest, most ambitious, most complex, and also most uneven work to date. A dive into family history through the eyes of a young Catalan woman who travels to Galicia to complete some legal paperwork, Romería plunges—quite literally—into what its protagonist uncovers about a side of her family she never knew, as well as about her father, whom she barely remembers and who died, like her mother, from AIDS-related complications.

Set in 2004, the film follows Marina (Llúcia Garcia), a film student living in Barcelona who travels to Vigo, Galicia, to meet her biological father’s family, with whom she’s had no contact since being given up for adoption. Her journey first brings her to an uncle, Lois (Tristán Ulloa), his wife, and a group of cousins—some her age, others younger—who are complete strangers to her. She connects with them easily enough, sharing stories and finding a certain warmth, but it quickly becomes clear that the real challenge lies with her grandparents. They never fully accepted their son’s life or choices—to the point that his death certificate doesn’t even mention he had a daughter—creating the legal obstacles Marina is trying to resolve.

The story—partly autobiographical, and arguably something of a companion piece to Summer 1993—takes Marina across different locations, including the Cíes Islands, where her parents once spent time together. As she pieces together fragments of her father’s past, she encounters a deeply fractured family, burdened by tensions and secrets that the film doesn’t always manage to fully articulate. At one point, Romería shifts into a dreamlike register: drawing from her mother’s diaries, it stages a series of scenes—almost as if lifted from another film—that attempt to reconstruct her parents’ relationship.

While the imagery leans toward a nostalgic aesthetic, the tone is noticeably harsher. With a few exceptions—like her cousin Nuno—family members remain wary of Marina. The younger cousins have been warned not to touch her blood for fear of contagion (the implication is clear), and her grandparents are suspicious of her presence and extended stay, convinced she may be after money. Perhaps most unsettling is the realization that the version of her parents’ story Marina grew up with—from how they met to how they died—differs significantly from the one told in Galicia. And even there, no single version seems to prevail.

Visually, the film is striking—sometimes at odds with the harshness of what it depicts. Shot by Hélène Louvart, Romería represents a step forward in Simón’s cinema, not necessarily in terms of refinement but certainly in ambition. The film reaches for a more expansive, at times even grandiose visual language. Where it becomes more problematic is in its recreation of her parents’ youthful, drug-fueled, free-spirited years through the mother’s diaries. These sequences veer into the overtly symbolic, occasionally edging toward a music-video aesthetic that feels out of sync with the rest.

Beyond those somewhat jarring passages, Romería signals a subtle shift in Simón’s trajectory. Her return to the autobiographical terrain of Summer 1993 is welcome—Alcarràs was a strong film, but more aligned with prevailing festival trends—but what distinguishes this work from her earlier ones is the absence of the deep affection for her characters that once defined her cinema. It’s not that she treats them harshly—there are moments of warmth, emotional encounters, even a faint undercurrent of sexual tension with her cousin—but there’s a noticeable distance, a coolness that ultimately permeates the entire film.

Despite its unevenness—and a few sequences that feel out of register—the film retains many of the qualities that have made Simón such an influential figure in contemporary Spanish cinema. Like Lucrecia Martel in Argentina and across Latin America some two decades ago, her work has inspired a generation of women filmmakers in her own country. She remains an exceptional builder of atmosphere and social worlds, especially those sprawling family networks where a celebration and an argument always seem to unfold at the same time. That instinct is very much intact here.

What Romería ultimately offers—alongside its captivating lead performance—is an opening up of Simón’s cinematic universe, a move beyond the naturalistic, rural framework that has quietly haunted much of recent Spanish cinema. The results may not fully match the film’s ambitions—at times, these new directions even echo strands of 1990s Spanish filmmaking—but they point to a filmmaker in transition, edging toward new spaces and possibilities. What comes next may well depend on how this film finds its place in the world.