Amidst the jagged cliffs and summery, sun-kissed shores of Vigo, on the Atlantic coast of Galicia in Spain, 18-year-old Marina (the arresting Llúcia Garcia) has arrived on a deeply personal mission. Having lost both of her parents at a very young age, the orphaned young woman has set off on a journey to meet her paternal grandparents and extended family for the first time. While connecting with her affectionate, teeming new clan, Marina also is forced to reconcile with the past, negotiating her idealized memories of her parents and difficult truths that have been long buried. Alternating between 2004 and the early 1980s, evoked in hallucinatory, grainy flashbacks, Romería achingly dramatizes the processes of creating new memories and holding onto fleeting ones. Carla Simón (Alcarràs) proves again with this delicate, naturalistic, and poignantly autobiographical film that she is an essential voice in international cinema. (NYFF)