The Spanish Goldener Bär winner Carla Simón has filmed her own experiences from childhood and youth in previous three feature films: Even in her debut “Fridas Sommer”, the director referred to the early death of her parents, both of whom died of AIDS, which she only learned when she was twelve years old. After her Berlinale winner “Alcarràs-The Last Harvest” about a childhood and youth at the farm, she returns to her parents in the “Romería”, which is also very autobiographically colored.
At a poetic dream level, Carla Simón approaches her past and creates a shimmering memory of two people who have suffered the fate of many. The Cannes Competition contribution “Romería” does not complain, but creates visual parallels between two generations, which have actually met far too short-supported by the longing for salt, algae and sea.
When looking at “Romería” you think you really taste the sea.
Marina (Llúcia Garcia) wants to study, but she needs a certificate of paternity to apply for state help. However, the 18-year-old catalonian grew up with her mother's family. Now she goes on a trip to Vigo on the Spanish Atlantic coast of her father's family to get the necessary document. Through the new family, she gets to know a new truth about her parents, but also always encounters new lies. Your constant companion is your mother's diary and her hand camera. What Marina is looking for in search of her parents' traces in five days is recorded in its own diary formulated in the form of questions.
Marina visits a strange place that she films with her hand camera like a tourist, because she also experiences her as a granddaughter, niece and cousin. She is silent and watches a lot. Due to Simón's calm style, the pictures look almost documentary. Above all by the dating of the diary, the different time levels are understood, because little by little the history of the parents is told in flashbacks. The simple structure gives “Romería” a meditative melancholy. If you get into it, you will be rewarded with a poetic memory trip.
A real cast coup
Incidentally, Simón examines the question of how you could imagine someone you have never seen: Marina and her mother are embodied by the same actress, and an actor also takes on the role of Marina's cousin and Marina's father (Mitch Martín). The revenue is not about a real illustration of the 80s, but the film remains consistent with Marina and her ideas – and since she did not know her parents, she just introduces herself and her cousin in the roles.
The scenes in which Marina and her parents experience the same time to experience similar things. Hélène Louvart's camera jumps into the sea with Marina, in which her mother and father also dive into the sea a little later. The young couple describes their drug frenzy with bare people on the streets and purple dolphins, then the clear sea changes its character – and the parents fight themselves again in the wild water (while we already know that they will soon no longer succeed).
Marina (Llúcia Garcia) is friendly by her father's family. But still there are still secrets between them …
In “Romería” Carla Simón is very autobiographically. From a real correspondence from her mother with friends and family, she wrote the semi-fictional diary of Marina's mother. Simón draws the image of a generation that searched for new freedoms for the Franco dictatorship and found it by the sea and (during the emerging AIDS pandemic) in Heroin. “Everyone died behind closed doors,” notes Marina's uncle, explaining why Marina is not said to be the truth about her parents ten years later. In order to present the AIDS mass death in Spain, the director uses a ghostly dance. At a festival, people move to the Spanish 80s hit “Bailaré Sobre Tu Tumba” (“I will dance on your grave”) of the Galician punk rock band Siniestro Total.
Some of the dancers are frozen, a sheet of sheets covers them. Gradually, more and more people fall over and are increasingly covered with white towels. In the end, they are all solidified. A strong picture! The fact that the band actually comes from Vigo, where Simón's mother comes from, is also no coincidence as the reference to the Santa-Compaña legend: they are ghosts that move around because they cannot die-and you have to be careful not to take you away. The ghosts are like memories that come back when you don't work them up. Carla Simón has found a conciliatory way to deal with it.
Conclusion: A meditative-poetic experience about memory and the memory of those who are no longer.
We saw “Romería” at the Hamburg Film Festival 2025.