Carla Simón Returns to Memory as Material

May 8. Carla Simón told AnOther that memory is never clean. You don't remember what happened. You remember the last time you remembered it.

Her third feature, Romería, arrives with that premise baked in. At 39, Simón has built a narrow catalogue: three films, all of them working the same corner of autobiography and revision. Her 2017 debut Summer 1993 tracked a child orphaned by AIDS. Her second, Alcarràs, followed a family losing their peach farm. Both films treated memory as witness. Romería treats it as structure.

The film centers on a family secret that surfaces during a pilgrimage. Simón described the project as dusted with magic, though the interview doesn't specify what that means in edit or image. What's clear is the director's continued interest in the gap between event and recall. She's said elsewhere that her childhood memories feel mythic now, less like documents than folktales she's heard retold.

That's a specific filmmaking stance. It means the camera isn't chasing realism. It's chasing the shape memory takes after ten years of being remembered. That's harder to shoot, easier to overdo.

Simón's first two films worked because they stayed small. They earned their mythic moments by keeping most of the frame grounded. Romería will test whether that balance holds when memory becomes the structure, not just the subject. The pilgrimage setting suggests ritual, repetition, return. Those are good anchors for a story about recall slipping sideways.

The film doesn't have a wide release date yet. Simón's catalogue moves slowly. That pace suits the work.