Romería

Summer 2004 on the glistening Galician coast: 18-year-old Marina (Llúcia Garcia), a confident, aspiring filmmaker who was raised by adoptive parents, needs to seek out her estranged paternal grandparents to obtain a signature required for enrolment at a university in Barcelona. Equipped with a camcorder and her deceased mother’s 20-year-old diaries, Marina drifts cautiously into the unruly lives of her uncles, aunts, and cousins, who superficially welcome her into the family fold while carefully evading her quest for direct answers. What were her biological parents really like? What was the cause of her father’s death? And what’s the real reason for the family’s evasiveness? It’s no surprise that families rarely have the courage to reveal or reconcile their secrets, yet this moving, precisely modulated new film brings us so close to reality of Marina’s dilemma that it feels as if our own futures, as well as our pasts, are linked to the outcome. In Spanish, Catalan and French, with English subtitles. 

“A vibrant, visually creative coming-of-age story… A stunning portrait of loss and recovery.” –Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com