Rating: NR | Runtime: 114 minutes
Release Date: September 5th, 2025 (Spain) / June 26th, 2026 (USA)
Studio: Elastica Films / Janus Films
Director(s): Carla Simón
Writer(s): Carla Simón / Neus Pipó Simón (letters)

They just hid us away.

Marina (Llúcia Garcia) assumes it’s just a clerical error. That things were crazy almost twenty years ago when both her parents died from AIDS due to heroin use and the details got mixed up. Why else would her biological father’s death certificate have the wrong year? Why else would it say he died with no children? She’ll head to Vigo, meet his side of the family for the first time (she’s been raised by her mother’s sister), and get it cleared up during a much-coveted reunion.

It’s what her uncle Lois (Tristán Ulloa) assumes too upon picking her up to sail to her grandparents’ house. Have a good time and see life on the opposite side of the peninsula. Learn more about her father than the little she’s gleaned from her mother’s diaries. It’ll be a final vacation before heading to university on the scholarship that necessitates her being officially claimed as a Piñero. That sun, fun, and heritage on the sea, however, hits a snag once truths and lies mix.

Another semi-autobiographical film from director Carla Simón (based off her mother Neus Pipó Simón’s letters), Romería initially unfolds with Marina laughing off these discrepancies. Diary facts refuted by Lois. Her father’s real death year causing her to wonder if her aunt got it wrong purposefully. And, of course, grandma (Marina Troncoso) flatly saying how she looks nothing like her mother despite everyone else saying she’s a spitting image.

It’s therefore a fascinating progression as the ways in which Marina’s estranged family speaks about her parents reveal deeper secrets some of them still aren’t willing to confront. Because the AIDS epidemic was a big taboo in the 1980s and held an immense stigma where it came to families wanting to admit members had it. Who’s to say that Marina’s adoptive mom truly thought her dad died five years earlier than he did because that is what she was told?

It would explain why her grandfather (José Ángel Egido) would claim Fon had no children since admitting he did meant admitting he existed at all. There are so many moments that stick throughout this film (including a wonderful dream-like sequence at the end visualizing Marina’s mother’s words with Garcia and Mitch Martín—who also plays Marina’s cousin Nuno—as her parents), but I can’t shake only seeing four photos on the grandparents’ wall instead of five.

Fon has all but been erased. If not for Marina’s arrival, they might have left him relegated to passing memories and prejudices. We can tell Lois wants to talk—perhaps because he was in France when Fon died. Iago (Alberto Gracia) enjoys talking about his brother but doesn’t because it hurts too much. Olalla (Miryam Gallego) told her kids not to touch Marina in case she has AIDS too. And “cool aunt” Virxinia (Sara Casasnovas) could probably go either way.

So, we watch as Marina comes to grips with a known truth being warped through the convenient desires of others. We listen as she does from around corners during arguments between her aunts and uncles discussing whether or not to give her what she wants since they know her grandparents have left it this long for a reason. Iago pulls no punches when talking about his father, though, so we’re prepared for every selfish outcome when they arise.

More than just this stance to erase Fon’s life, however, we’re also learning about the reverberations of the 1980s still felt in 2004. Marina wasn’t the only one who lost her parents, but she might be the only one who became a teetotaler as a result. Conversations about drugs hold a heavier weight than merely parents watching out for their kids. There’s history. There’s fear. There are more secrets than you can count with more lies yet to be revealed.

The real showstopper, though, is a moment within that “flashback” dream as Marina’s parents sell heroin at a club. What starts as a continuation of events read from the diary soon moves into an interpretative dance wherein the participants start to fall one by one with each being caught and covered by a white sheet to signify their death. By the end there are more sheets than people before those who remain disappear completely to leave only the ghosts.

It’s a perfect representation of how this family views Fon. They’ve allowed him to become little more than a statistic after how they dealt with his illness and its aftermath. Marina’s presence forces them to recognize his ghost and remember the flawed person he was. That despite how they treated his final years, he did leave something behind that was worth claiming. The question then becomes whether they’ll be allowed to turn Marina into a ghost too.

The film itself looks great thanks to Hélène Louvart’s cinematography and the aesthetic choice to merge past and present with words and visuals via the diary, Marina’s Aughts-era digital videos, and that dream sequence. The layers between Marina and her mother are intentional. As are the ones between Nuno and Fon. It can get a bit weird considering the result is a couple of flirtatious cousins, but that confusion is part of it. “Does blood make you family?”

And Garcia is fantastic in the lead role. This is her feature debut—something Simón is used to having generally used non-actors in her previous films. The change here, however, is that this newcomer must hold her own against industry veterans to maintain a sense of innocence as the outsider upon entering their family and the palpable courage to stand her ground when they try defining that presence on their terms rather than her own.

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Llúcia Garcia and Mitch Martín in ROMERÍA; courtesy of Janus Films.