Romería, Carla Simón’s third feature after Summer 93 and Our Solitudes, arrives in French theaters on April 8, 2026. Shown in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2025, the film follows a young adopted woman forced to reconnect with her biological family to obtain a document needed for her studies. This French release revives a title that directly continues the director’s exploration of family memory and autobiographical experience.
Romería
Film | 2026
Release: April 8, 2026
Drama | Running time: 1h55
Directed by Carla Simón | Featuring Llúcia Garcia, Mitch, Tristán Ulloa
Original title: Romería
Country: Spain
Marina, adopted as a child, heads to the Atlantic coast to obtain a vital civil status document needed to pursue her higher education. Guided by her mother’s diary, she seeks out a part of her paternal family she has never known. The film centers on this concrete journey, a trip that reopens memories of her late parents and lays bare secrets, silences, and long-buried shame.
This new film continues Carla Simón’s cinematic thread, with her earlier features already drawing on family history. Romería picks up that strand and anchors it to a concrete situation: administrative necessity becomes the starting point for a return to the origins. The project also bears an openly autobiographical dimension, the director having revealed that she herself had to reconnect with her father's family at age 18 to obtain documents related to her parents.
Her inclusion in the lineup for the 78e édition du Festival de Cannes confirms Carla Simón's standing in European auteur cinema. The film was also in the running for the Palme d’Or. Beyond Cannes, Romería has travelled to several international festivals, including Sydney, Busan, Hamburg and Vancouver.
The shoot took place mostly in Galicia, especially in Pontevedra, with a few scenes filmed in Catalonia, in Tarragona. This setting informs the narrative’s form: the title Romería signifies, depending on the region, either a religious pilgrimage or a popular festival. The film thus pairs Marina’s intimate journey with a collective imagination tied to origins, rites, and family memory.
In the cast, Carla Simón brings together Llúcia Garcia, who here lands her first major screen role, alongside Mitch and Tristán Ulloa. Other performers such as Janet Novás and José Ángel Egido are also part of the ensemble announced for the film. This blend of fresh faces and seasoned actors frames a narrative centered on transmission, unspoken truths, and the reconstruction of a fractured family history.
The film’s April 2026 release also repositions Romería in Carla Simón’s directing trajectory: after Été 93, which focused on childhood and mourning, and Nos Soleils, Golden Bear winner at Berlin in 2022, Simón continues a body of work where private family history intersects with broader questions of lineage, class, territory and heritage. Here, the initial administrative quest opens onto a family investigation, without abandoning the tangible ground of documents, memories, and stories passed down in incomplete fashion.
To extend your in-theater experience, check out the April movie releases, discover the must-see films of the moment, and explore our top drama picks of the year.
