Romería is a 2025 Spanish drama film written and directed by Carla Simón. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last May and was released in the UK last Friday, 8 May.

It is 2004. 18-year-old orphan Marina Piñeiro (Llúcia Garcia), is told that she must have herself recognised on her father’s death certificate in order to apply for a university scholarship. So, she travels to Vigo to meet her paternal family and rectify this situation. As she meets various relatives for the first time, she questions them about her parents, and we become aware that there are a number of discrepancies in the stories told. It quickly becomes apparent that both her father and her mother were serious drug users, indeed both died as a result of their drug-taking, but there is a deal of uncertainty over the timing and manner of her father’s death.

There is then a dreamlike sequence where Marina travels back in time to 1983 and we watch her parents at the height of their drug-taking, seemingly happy together, although gradually the heroine takes hold. And that is about it really. I should just say that the word Romería means pilgrimage and that this is apparently ‘autobiographical fiction’.

That is the plot, so what is the issue? Why only one star? To begin with, I didn’t like Marina. She seemed totally self-absorbed: I found her annoyingly smug and often downright rude to her extended family, especially odd since she was meeting them for the first time. As regards the dream sequence, unfortunately I find films about people taking drugs to be incredibly boring – they may think it is all wonderful, but I find it is a bit like being the nominated driver on a stag night – you just want it to end. Drug taking is of course very self-indulgent, to hell with the rest of the world, and sadly so was this film. I had no interest at all in what happened to Marina – to my mind she probably deserved it.

Romería was very much a wasted afternoon for me.