Carla Simón Uncovers a Galician Family's Skeletons in the Semi-Autobiographical ‘Romería'

Yahoo

18-05-2025

After winning prizes at Berlin with 'Summer 1993' and 'Alcarrás,' Spanish director Carla Simón is now in the main competition at Cannes with 'Romería,' a deeply personal story about family and memory set in Galicia.
The film tells the story of 18-year-old Marina, who travels to the northwest of Spain to meet her biological father's family. The girl's journey is one of discovery, as she has never met her father, who died of AIDS when she was young.
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Variety sat down with Simón to discuss the evolving Spanish film landscape, her latest creative choices and the emotional roots of her storytelling.
Variety: Spanish films have gained recognition abroad in recent years, especially from new voices. What do you think is fueling this movement?
Simón: I believe it's partly generational. A lot of filmmakers are experimenting, taking risks and embracing different directions. There's also a notable rise in female voices and a broader diversity of class backgrounds. People like me, from small villages or middle-class families, have found ways to study film and create work, even outside of formal cinema schools. Producers are trusting this new generation, and that momentum is creating something really special.
One particularly striking trend is the number of successful female filmmakers from Catalonia. But in your latest film, you shift from Catalonia to Galicia. Why the change in setting?
It's a personal one. My biological father was from Galicia, and my parents' love story began there. The film is about memory and identity, so it made sense to revisit those places. Galicia is a place I've visited many times, always in a kind of research mode. It's spiritually and visually unique, very different from inland Catalonia, and that contrast really helped shape the film.
Galicia has a very distinct look and feel. How did that influence your approach to the film's aesthetics?
The landscape changed everything. Galicia is green and coastal, whereas the Catalan countryside is more arid and brown. We shot in Vigo, an industrial city near the sea but not facing it directly. That disconnection was fascinating. We also switched from mostly handheld camera work in my previous films to more structured, composed shots here. It reflects the emotional distance Marina has from this family, unlike the intimacy of the other two films.
In 'Romería,' the family is clearly upper-middle-class, very different from the rural, working-class families of your earlier work. Why this shift?
Again, it's partially based on my real family, but there's a lot of fiction. I met my father's side of the family as an adult, and they were quite different from the world I grew up in. The film explores what it's like to be an outsider in your own family. Marina, the main character, connects most with another outsider, the younger brother. That tension, both emotional and class-based, gave the film a new dynamic.
Marina experiments with filmmaking herself, capturing parts of her journey. How did you decide when to use her point-of-view footage versus the film's own lens?
Her footage had to feel raw and imperfect; she's still learning. That contrast with the rest of the film was intentional. Her desire to film wasn't in the original script, but it made sense. She's looking for her own voice as a filmmaker. In a way, the story became partly about that process, why people film, what compels them to tell stories. For me, it's my family history that led me to filmmaking.
Her mom's diary becomes a central piece of the story. Was that an intentional parallel with Marina's filming?
Yes, absolutely. The diary is a generational portrait, it captures how people lived, loved and partied in the '80s. It's based on letters my own mother wrote to friends, which were very intimate. The film draws a parallel between that written account and Marina's visual diary. She's searching for something through her lens, and eventually she starts filming not just empty spaces but her new family too.
There's an unreliable narrative element to the story. Everyone remembers things differently, and Marina uncovers contradictions as she goes. How did you approach the story structure?
That was key. Memory is subjective; everyone reshapes it. When I researched my own family history, I realized no two accounts ever matched. That inspired the episodic structure of Marina meeting different relatives. Eventually, she understands that the truth might never be fully knowable. So she imagines it. That liberation, creating your own memories to form your identity, is at the heart of the film.
You've always worked with large ensembles, but the family in this film feels particularly authentic. What's your rehearsal process like?
We cast actors who naturally shared traits with the characters. Then we did extensive improvisations, scenes that wouldn't appear in the film but shaped the family's shared history. We even had the actors who played Marina's parents act out scenes from the '80s to help others understand their dynamic. The goal was to give them real, felt experiences of their roles. We rehearsed in the actual locations to lock in the physical and emotional space.
It really comes through on screen. The family feels authentic, with all the unspoken tension and buried emotion.
That's the most important part for me, capturing those quiet dynamics, the things that go unsaid. Every look, every silence matters. I'm glad that came through.
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