Review: Questing into her past with a camcorder, a young woman confronts the worst in 'Romera'

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Set us as preferred Early in “Romería,” the film’s main character, Marina, is asked by some children if she’s ever seen the Santa Compaña, a collection of ghosts who, in Spanish legend, supposedly wander in a pack across the landscape.Humoring the kids, Marina says she hasn’t.

That’s good, one of the girls responds.“They’re spirits that can’t die.”As it happens, Marina is actually on a journey of sorts to connect with the dead — and so is Spanish writer-director Carla Simón, whose third feature is an autobiographical tale about her own quest to make peace with her late parents.

Slender but flecked with magical touches, “Romería” is so gentle it never quite qualifies as haunting.Nonetheless, Simón stirs up the ineffable sadness that comes with wanting answers to the mysteries of your family — and then, like it or not, receiving them.Newcomer Llúcia Garcia plays Marina, an 18-year-old aspiring filmmaker.

It’s July 2004, and she’s traveled to the picturesque port city of Vigo to obtain government paperwork that will make her eligible for a university scholarship.She never knew her father Alfonso, who died in 1987.

For some reason, there are no records indicating that she was his daughter.Hence the trip to Vigo to see her paternal grandparents for the first time so she can authenticate her ancestry.Simón, whose previous features “Summer 1993” and “Alcarràs” also grappled with family matters, follows along with Marina on the way to this anxious meeting.

Marina’s mother died only a few years after Alfonso, making Marina an orphan.But the mom’s parting gift, a diary, provides opaque glimpses into her life with Alfonso in the mid-1980s.

Before Marina arrives at her grandparents’ home, though, she must run a gauntlet of uncles, aunts and cousins, their reactions to her existenc...