Romería: A Pilgrimage for a Scholarship and Family Truth

Marina (Llúcia Garcia), 18, travels from Barcelona to Vigo, Galicia, to secure her late father’s grandparents’ signatures for a scholarship. The paperwork requires proof of her birth-parents, forcing her to confront a family that offers fragmented, evasive recollections of her mother and father, who died of AIDS-related illnesses. She records the journey with a camcorder and her mother’s 1980s diary, while flashbacks dramatize her parents’ heroin-laden lives.

New York Times

Director Carla Simón lost both biological parents to AIDS-related complications—likely linked to heroin—at age six. Her memory relies on letters. Simón’s earlier autobiographical films, *Summer 1993* and *Alcarràs*, explored loss. *Romería* is set in 2004, with flashbacks to the mid-1980s, a period marked by stigma around AIDS and heroin in post-Franco Spain.

IndieWire

Carla Simón writes and directs, drawing on her families. Llúcia Garcia, a street-cast newcomer with no formal training, plays both Marina and her mother—a dual role Simón called “very difficult.” The cast includes Tristán Ulloa as uncle Lois and Galician relatives.

IndieWire

*Romería* runs 1 hour 54 minutes, in Catalan and Spanish with subtitles. Hélène Louvart captured the Galician coastline. It premiered at Cannes 2025, screened at festivals, and opens in U.S. theaters on June 26 2026 via Janus Films.

IndieWire

The film foregrounds the lingering stigma of AIDS and heroin in Spanish society, using Marina’s quest to interrogate collective memory. Simón’s “fill the gaps through our imaginations” approach shows how cinema can reconstruct absent histories while prompting dialogue about intergenerational trauma.

Harper's Bazaar

Simón says the film let her “close something about my family, about my past, about my memory,” calling it healing for some relatives and “a bit painful” for others. She adds it is “personal in the end” and that she no longer feels compelled to revisit her own life, though she hints at a future musical.

IndieWire

Some sources label Simón’s parents’ deaths as “AIDS-related illnesses,” while others attribute them to heroin-related complications. No external criticism appears.

Harper's Bazaar

• “I have three very big families between the adoptive family and the biological family, so I feel I explored them all already,” — Carla Simón, Director

IndieWire

• “It’s allowed me to close something about my family, about my past, about my memory.” — Carla Simón, Director

IndieWire

• “It was a very difficult role to cast because she had to do two roles in one, Marina and her mom,” — Carla Simón, Director

IndieWire

• “I realized that we should allow ourselves to fill the gaps through our imaginations and that I actually have the cinema to create the images that I’m lacking.” — Carla Simón, Director

Harper's Bazaar

After its U.S. debut, *Romería* will roll out internationally. Simón plans a musical, suggesting that while this film may close one autobiographical chapter, future projects will keep exploring personal themes in new forms.

IndieWire