After crafting one of the most deeply felt debuts of the prior decade with Summer 1993, Carla Simón followed up the coming-of-age drama with her Golden Bear winner Alcarràs, and last year she came to Cannes Film Festival with her stirring, evocative third feature Romería. We’re pleased to exclusively unveil that Janus Films will release the Cannes and New York Film Festival selection in theaters beginning June 26 in New York at Film at Lincoln Center and Film Forum, followed by a national expansion. Along with the release news, we’re presenting a gallery of exclusive stills.
Here’s the synopsis: “The film follows 18-year-old Marina, orphaned at a young age, when she visits Spain’s Atlantic coast to meet her paternal grandparents for the first time. As she tries to find her place in an extended family she has never known, Marina pieces together memories of her parents with the stories told by relatives who have their own secrets to protect. With a large and charismatic ensemble cast mixing actors and non-professionals alike, and led by magnetic newcomer Llúcia Garcia, Romería is a tender, surprising, and deeply felt film about the way we keep alive the people we’ve lost.”
Rory O’Connor said in his Cannes review, “Continuing in the low-key register of her Golden Bear winner Alcarràs, Carla Simón returns with Romería, another tale of intergenerational dissonance. A film about the stories families choose to tell and the ones they bury deep inside, it unfurls on Spain’s Atlantic coast, where 18-year-old orphan Marina (Llúcia Garcia) hopes to reunite with her paternal family. It’s also a story about displacement and yearning for lost roots, themes that cut close to the bone for a director whose parents died of AIDS when she was still a child, and who reunited with her father’s family in the town of Vigo, Galicia, where the film is set, at the same age. Simón has always been an autobiographical filmmaker; Romería might be her most personal work yet.”
Check out the exclusive new stills below.
