Biography

Carla Simón was born on December 22, 1986 in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. She is a director and writer, known for Alcarràs (2022), Romería (2025) and Summer 1993 (2017).

[press conference for Romería (2025) at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival] The word Romería does have a mystical meaning; it's a very religious word, it refers to a trip. The trip Marina makes is very mystical because she has to emotionally-speaking reconnect with her parents and reconnect with her childhood - that's the story. There's also another meaning to the word which came a bit later on. We're talking about the northern part of Spain, I love popular parties, festivities and I wanted to show these in the film, these traditions. I love to portray this kind of situation - the film also refers to that meaning. There are a lot of fictional elements. I met a part of my family, when I was more or less the same age as Llúcia [Llúcia Garcia], but not all of the family. I met them in Madrid because some of them lived there and the trip to Galicia came a bit later on. The emotions I felt, my curiosity and my frustration regarding not really being able to fully understand my parents' story were very real and a part of me and that was the driving force behind the film. It was a very real starting point. You have this family history depicted in a very short period. My family is bigger than what you see in the film, so it's not all autobiographical. There were also fictional elements I included so that the story would work.

[Cannes press conference for Romería (2025)] I had to deal with part of my family that I didn't really know very well. I wasn't familiar with these family members because they lived on the other side of Spain. However at the same time, I did have to create a distance because the story I tell in the film is not the same as mine. Of course the characters go on a voyage of discovery, but what I tried to do in the film is to create a fiction. When it came to the making of the film, what proved most difficult was to deal with things in a kind of dreamlike way. I try to make things look as natural as possible usually when I make a film, but in this film you have this poetic dimension. I didn't know whether the public would follow me on this voyage of discovery and in fact I found it very positive to see the excellent reaction of the public when the film was screened.