TIFF25 REVIEW: Forastera [2026]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 97 minutes
Studio: Grasshopper Film
Director(s): Lucía Aleñar Iglesias
Writer(s): Lucía Aleñar Iglesias

She’s always here.

It starts as a gag. Pepa (Núria Prims) rings to apologize to her mother and believes it is she who picks up the phone. Her teenage daughter Cata (Zoe Stein) plays along, pretending to answer as she assumes her grandmother would until her mother finally catches on and says her name. When it happens again, however, Catalina (Marta Angelat) has died. But instead of telling the hairdresser this news, Cata once again pretends to be her grandmother to cancel the appointment and assure the woman that she’ll ring soon for a touch up.

Why? Because Cata isn’t ready to let her grandmother go. The two were very close thanks to summers spent at her beach house in Mallorca. They share the same name and people constantly tell her how much they look alike. It’s such a problem that Pepa requests she not wear any of Catalina’s clothes around the property just in case her grandfather (Lluís Homar’s Tomeu) sees her. He’s taking this tragedy very hard—talking about how her spirit remains. Catching a glimpse of Cata in one of his wife’s dresses might just confuse him more.

What Pepa doesn’t realize, though, is that Cata needs that confusion to prevent herself from having to deal with reality. She’s the one who found her grandmother face down on the stone stairs. She’s the one enduring a PTSD episode when seeing a drunk co-ed lying on the sand. If Cata can trick her grandfather into acting as though she is Catalina, then the rest of this summer can continue like normal. There’s even a sense of healing in the make-believe as far as finally getting Tomeu out of the house, but one of them must eventually wake-up.

Lucía Aleñar Iglesias’ Forastera follows Cata wading through this new reality amidst the backdrop of what had been a consequence free vacation with Swedish tourist Max (Nonni Ardal Hammarström) and her usual antics with her grandparents. Suddenly grandma is gone. Mom has arrived. And the arguments and emotions she and her younger sister Eva used to ignore become so unbearable that Cata starts playing matriarch just to stay sane. She’s correct in many instances too—enough that her elders stop demanding she watch her tone.

Because it’s hard on them all. None of them quite understand what they should feel since they are often too busy worrying about how everyone else feels. Tomeu wants to sulk in the present day’s malaise. Pepa wants to take control and make plans for the future. And Cata hopes to stop time and return to the past. Tensions rise as a result of these contrasts and they each begin to resent the other’s perspective rather than sit down and listen. If this family has a singular genetic trait, it would be stubbornness.

What makes the drama truly captivating, though, is that Cata’s need to allow herself to be possessed by her grandmother’s spirit isn’t solely driven by intent. Yes, she puts herself into situations that would make any mother worry about boundaries with a grieving man, but there is both a sweetness to many moments and an inability to prevent them. Cata doesn’t seek out the exact traumatic experience that made it so Catalina never swam in the Mediterranean again. It simply finds her with an identical dose of senseless brutality.

Forastera is therefore very much a coming-of-age story despite its unconventional trigger through the sorrow of death. By embodying her grandmother, Cata seemingly matures overnight to no longer let her grandfather’s chauvinism or her mother’s selfishness stand. She takes the role of steward once Pepa hires a caretaker to help around the house and rejects the role lustful teen wasting time kissing boys and drinking alcohol. This summer becomes a key turning point for Cata to recognize the preciousness of life and complexities of love.

It’s a beautifully shot film as well with exotic vistas augmented by the terrace’s recently installed glass railings for an unencumbered view of the sea. Iglesias infuses a couple of scenes with imaginative visuals that allow room for some supernatural manifestations courtesy of ants on the ceiling and reflective ghosts made of light. And the performances all teeter on the edge of coming undone so the tiniest bit of pushback can jog them awake to their own poor behavior. The distance between frustration and contrition is never far.

Homar wonderfully portrays Tomeu’s grief with a desire for isolation even he knows isn’t healthy. It’s why he needs Cata’s game to ween him off the black hole of despair that comes from an unexpected death. She, knowingly or not, holds his hand to guide him past it. And in so doing, Stein provides Cata the strength to do too much and the space to accept when it’s gone too far. It’s a fantastic breakthrough role of layered emotions as she becomes a vessel for a ghost born from her grandmother’s memory and love that remains within.