Marina loses her parents to addiction and illness at a young age. When she’s older, the aspiring filmmaker sets out in the summer to find her roots in the northwestern coastal region of Spain, she finds herself caught in a web of conflicting memories and heartbreaking discoveries. The award-winning Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón based this wistful, sun-drenched portrait on her own experiences.

Does a shared bloodline automatically make you family? Marina was orphaned at a young age. When she turns 18, she travels to sunny Vigo, camcorder in hand. In this Spanish city on the Atlantic coast, she will finally meet her father’s family, whose signature she needs for a scholarship application.

There, she encounters a whole host of uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents. The family is warm and welcoming, yet also irritable and evasive, wealthy and distant. As Marina pieces together the puzzle and tries to form an image of her parents, she is confronted with conflicting memories and heartbreaking new information. In 2022, Carla Simón received the Golden Bear in Berlin for Alcarràs. With Romería (“pilgrimage”), she shares an intimate piece of autobiographical fiction that poignantly reveals how we can never fully know our parents. Both Llúcia Garcia and the breathtaking Galician coastline deliver stunning leading performances in this film, which shows that filmmaking — and storytelling in general — is a powerful way to come to terms with an elusive past.