Un physical and internal journey through the places where his parents knew love and happiness, but also despair and defeat. The one to do it is Marina, 18 years old, orphaned as a child, just like director Carla Simón. His Romeria – The sea of memories it’s a movie autobiographical which retraces the symbolic pilgrimage – this is the meaning of the word romeria — undertaken by the Catalan author herself in an attempt to reconstruct her own story. In Italian cinemas from 11 June with I Wonder Pictures, the film reflects on the dramatically elusive nature of memory and on the complex process of identity construction of a young woman.
A clip from the film Romeria – The sea of memoriesby Carla Simon
In the clip, Marina — played by Catalan actress Llúcia Garcia in her film debut — is in Galicia on the trail of his biological parents. He asks questions, collects testimonies, tries to recompose the fragments of a story that often returns contradictory answers. It is the beginning of a journey during which, with the video camera in hand and his mother’s diary in his pocket, he will bring to light long-buried family emotions, truths never told and wounds that have never completely healed.
The movie poster (I Wonder Pictures).
The plot of the film, autobiographical
This search has an official reason: adopted by another family, Marina needs a birth certificate to obtain a scholarship. Behind this formal reason, however, lies a deeper need: to understand what everyone seems to want to forget.
«I tried to reconstruct the story of my parents through the memories of my family and those who knew them”, said the director. «But I failed. The inherently fragmented nature of memory plays an important role, but the main obstacle is the stigma surrounding AIDS, which clouds these memories. This story aims to recover the legacy of a forgotten generation who suffered the dual consequences of heroin addiction and the appearance of a new virus. A part of Spanish historical memory that deserves to be revisited.”
Not just Marina’s personal drama
Thus the film progressively broadens its gaze: from the personal drama of a girl it comes to tell the fate of an entire generation marked by the virus. And, at the same time, that of a country which, in the delicate transition phase from dictatorship to democracy, has chosen to remove and forget.
Romería – The sea of memories also completes Carla Simón’s autobiographical trilogystarted with Summer 1993 and continued with Alcarràs – The last harvestwinner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2022.
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