An orphaned teen travels to meet her extended biological family for the first time, an experience that will unearth long-suppressed memories and uncover painful secrets.
When 18-year-old Marina journeys to the Galician coast to trace the echoes of her parents’ past, her search turns into a pilgrimage through memory, where her family’s history reveals itself in unexpected ways.
Who were our parents before we were born? Romería follows 18-year-old Marina at a moment in life when she begins to search for her own origins. In Galicia she encounters an unfamiliar terrain of fragmented memories and relatives who carry small pieces of a love story she never had the chance to know.
Through encounters with those who knew her parents, and using her mother’s diary as her compass, Marina gains insight into a past marked by addiction, loss and illness – a past that shaped her family and continues to influence her identity.
Carla Simón draws on material from her own background and works with a precise, observational film language in which details, environments, bodily gestures and subtle dreamlike elements bring forward both the intimate and the societal.
Building on the approach of Summer 1993 and Alcarràs, Romería shows how a personal journey can carry traces of a broader generational experience, opening an emotional resonance that lingers long after the film ends.