Family Secrets

Romería (2025) - Simón In Catalan filmmaker Carla Simón's new film, Romería, the focus is, once again, her family history, just like her debut, Summer 1993 (2017). This autobiographical film tells a story of Marina (Llucía Garcia), an 18 year old orphan, traveling to the Northwestern port city of Vigo, to reconnect with her paternal family. The year is 2004. She hopes to gain recognition as a legitimate daughter of her dead father on paper, so she can get a scholarship to study film. Navigating knotty family relations with her mother's diary as a guide, Marina learns the truth about her deceased parents and how they were treated by the family when they were alive.

Marina is greeted by her uncle Lois, his wife and three sons who live on a houseboat. She would be staying with them while visiting Vigo. Nuno (Mitch Martin), one of Lois's sons, being around the same age as Marina, becomes close. After meeting various aunts and uncles and cousins, Marina discovers many discrepancies in their stories about her parents and what she was told growing up and also her mother's diary. For instance, Lois tells her that her parents lived in an apartment in Playa Samil, a beach overlooking the isle of Cie, but her mother's diary indicates that they lived in the nearby isle of Toralla, and she finds out that her father died in 1992, not in 1987 like she was told when she was growing up.

Marina grows closer to uncle Iago (Alberto Garcia), a motorcycle riding, black sheep of the family, as he reminds of them of Marina's father. She gets a cold reception from her grandmother while her grandfather gives her an envelope full of cash for her studies. She refuses, but relents when he persists. She is disappointed to learn that her grandparents kept her sick father in the house, isolated, away from prying eyes, after he contracted AIDS and dying. Iago explains that back then, it was a taboo subject and people hid their sick family members in order to save face.

Marina sneaks out of the houseboat one night with the help of Nino and sneaks into her grandparents' house to return the cash envelope. Then Marina takes a rowboat to visit Toralla, where her parents once lived.

Now we are introduced to her parents in the 80s, played by Garcia and Martino, playing double roles, living their carefree, bohemian life on the beach. It becomes increasingly clear that they were both heroin addicts and Iago was in the scene as well, but survived but Marina's parents didn't.

Romería is a pretty film, despite its heavy subject. Shot by the great French cinematographer Hélène Louvart (La Chimera, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, The Beaches of Agnés), the film captures the sunkissed Atlantic coast of Vigo, as well as naturally lit interiors. The dream-like sequence in Toralla, where young lovers (Marina's parents) spend their carefree days is gorgeous to look at. The camera adores luminous LIucia Garcia, who is in every scene, often in her red dress with her cute bangs, walking around with her little digital camera.

But Romeria is a little too precious and picture-perfect for me to fully embrace. The film's visual beauty undercuts its serious subjects - The heroin addiction and AIDS crisis in the 80s and the society's collective shameful response to it. Romería is Simón's personal reconstruction of the incidents that ultimately robbed her childhood. But as with Summer 1993, it feels like a heavily sanitized version of recounting a family history from a doe-eyed, little goody two-shoes innocent child's point of view.

Romerîa opens in theaters June 26 in New York and July 1 in Los Angeles. National rollout to follow.

War Games

Summer War (2026) - Scherson Chilean director Alicia Scherson, adapts Roberto Bolaño's posthumous manuscript The Third Reich into Summer War, with the blessing from Lotaro Bolaño, the author's son (serving as an executive producer). This is Scherson's second adaptation of Bolaño's work, the first one being The Future, based on A Little Lumpen Novelita, about two orphans and a recluse, former beefcake played by Rutger Hauer in Chile. The Third Reich, which was written in 1989, may lack the author's signature style of labyrinthine, POV shifting later works, but is just as sharp and complex in its observations of Latin America under political strife and legacy of colonialism.

Summer War takes place in Chile in February 1989, in the waning days of Pinochet dictatorship. A pasty, bespectacled gringo named Udo Berger (Dan Beirne) is vacationing in Santiago, staying in the same hotel he once visited as a child with his parents. He is there to write an article about a popular strategy board game called The Third Reich. It's a WWII inspired wargame with hexagonal chips with complicated rules and stats. Udo belongs to an enthusiastic players group in the US and takes the game very seriously. In fact, he brought the board game with him to play by himself, much to the chagrin of his gorgeous girlfriend Ingrid (Lux Pascal). Udo narrates that things have changed in Chile and it feels much safer since his last visit - someone describes it as, "like Florida, just a little bit dirtier."

While on the beach sunbathing and swimming, Udo and Ingrid befriend a group, headed by enigmatic Charly (Augustin Padella), an Argentine with his profession and background shrouded in mystery. Udo also notices a man with a burn mark on half of his face, locally known as El Quemado (burnt man), living on the beach, making a living by providing beach chairs and surf boards to beach goers.

One night, to Ingrid's dismay, they witness Charly beating up his girlfriend. When they tell locals about calling the police, they laugh it off. "No, the police aren't going to help." A few days later, Charly disappears after taking his surfboard out to the sea. Udo suspects a foul play. We get the feeling that below the surface of sun-kissed beaches, things are not as safe as it seems. Spooked by all these dark developments, Ingrid goes back home. Udo stays behind, telling her that he will stick around until the missing Argentine is found. Instead, he finds a formidable opponent in El Quemado, in playing the Third Reich with. Udo notices that Quemado is extremely fast at catching up with the game - The Allies are winning! Udo finds out Quemado is coached by a sick old proprietor of the hotel, whose wife he is having an affair with.

On the eve of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Pinochet stepping down, Summer War examines how the past lingers on in the minds and actions of people. As the board game bleeds into real life, things get intense. The Third Reich might be a harmless strategy game, a theoretical exercise for an American, but for people who lived and experienced everyday violence under dictatorship, which was assisted by the US government, it hits differently. For Quemado, it's not a mere game. He has to defeat the nazis.

Summer War is a synecdochical story of checkered Colonial/Imperialist history and the First World intervention in Latin America. Udo is an arrogant, yet naive man who thinks past memories and infatuations with the place give him the right to be there and stick his nose in other people's business. The film is an intriguing psychological study that is at once seductive and mesmerizing. Just like The Future, her previous Bolaño adaptation, Scherson relies on building a mood and tension rather than explaining things through dialog or narration while dealing with the complex geopolitical dynamics of the region.

Summer War plays part of Tribeca Film Festival on 6/7, 8, 12. For tickets and more info, please visit the festival website.

Haunted House Coming of Age Story

Caity (2026) - Calleran As our world hurtles toward darkness at a breathtaking speed, many filmmakers have tuned their lenses toward family dramas recently: Christian Petzold's Miroirs No.3, Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value and Hylnur Pálmason's The Love That Remains, to just name a few.

With that in mind, Caity explores the all-but-rare family drama: The precious father-daughter relationship that we don't see much in American films nowadays. It's a beautifully written and acted, incredibly well-crafted coming of age/arrested development story that deserves your attention, in the YouTube-grown, genre-dominated American movie scene in 2026. It signals the arrival of a major new talent in American cinema, writer/director Lindsay Calleran.

For the Clark household, it's a season to put up The Clark Family Haunt, a family operated haunted house attraction in upstate New York. We have the overly hyper dad Paul (Morgan Spector) trying to set up everything with the help of his younger teenage daughter Caity (Chiara Aurelia).

With inserts of home video footage of them goofing around and cracking jokes throughout the film, you can tell that Caity adores her dad to no end. With many townsfolk hired as workers for the Halloween season, it's an yearly tradition that Paul takes very seriously with his child-like glee.

While preparation is underway, we see brief glimpses of fractures appearing in the Clarks; mom (Emily Shaffer) tries to put on a sunny disposition, but there is a shade of sadness and tiredness in her expressions. Dana (Olivia Rouyre), Caity's older sister, who works as a waitress in a local restaurant, doesn't want anything to do with the haunted house business; either she grew out of it, or some past experiences irked her. There's chatter about AA meetings that Paul might be skipping.

Caity finds a hidden bottle of vodka in Paul's workshed, but decides to not say anything. She is either in denial that her dad isn't a perfect man, or is not taking his drinking problem seriously or trying to protect him; maybe all of the above.

At 16, Caity is still in a fuck-around-and-find out stage. There is definitely a willing hesitation in Caity not to grow up too fast. She hangs out with her best friend Petey (Michelle Mao), smoking weed, talking about boys and getting drugs from a local drug dealer. She flirts with Hannah (Jordan Hull) and the handsome twins Liam and Sean (played by Jonah and Christian Lees), who are all new recruits for the season. They hook up, play around at the job, and work under the influence, including drinking from dad's stashed bottle.

The Clark Family Haunt features some very innovative scares with laser beams and other gadgets, as well as traditional gothic settings where Caity and others act out in various parts and scenarios. It's a fun working environment for the most part.

Then there's the work behind the scenes; dealing with people's egos- their less than perfect work ethics, the payroll, and the rehearsals. One day, they find Paul locked in his office unconscious, overdosed on something. Things boil over in the Clark household. The season's not over yet, and now Caity is in charge of running the show while Paul checks into rehab.

When we love someone unconditionally, we overlook their imperfections, even though other people warn you about those bad traits in the ones you love. You defend them vehemently until you face the fact first-hand and can't ignore the grim reality anymore. Caity not only learns to accept Paul's problems, but gets to experience how easy it is to fall for the same addiction. She gets to share a deeper understanding of his afflictions.

Caity is a tender, funny and affecting film anchored by Chiara Aurelia, in her stellar lead performance. Her display of a deep emotional range is well beyond her years. She destined to be a major star.

The strong supporting cast includes Zach Cherry (from the Fallout series), Mao, Hull, West Liang (concerned local sherriff) and Shaffer. Calleran's script shines in its authenticity and honesty, dealing with arrested development issues and finding one's identity growing up. The brisk, effective, rhythmic editing by Joe Stankus also stands out, as does Jack Davis' natural camera work. I also loved the super imposition of closeups within the frame and split screen being favored over standard coverages for reaction shots and subtle emotional states.

In these trying times as the world is burning, it makes sense that many great artists put their focus inwards and rely on the family for comfort and strength. Caity exemplifies the need for the comfort and healing that a family provides when things are getting bleaker everyday in a chaotic world we are living in.

Caity enjoyed its world premiere at the 2026 Tribeca Festival tonight, and screens again June 8, June 11, and June 12. Pleae check Tribeca 2026 website for more info.

Furniture Store Labyrinth

Backrooms (2026) - Parsons The liminal spaces - a byproduct of the ever progressing, expanding capitalist world - the mall, corporate offices, underground subway stations, hospital wards, suburban cul-de-sacs, innercity public parks, abandoned housing have been the subject or background for numerous films, most notably, the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa and J-horror auteurs in the 90s and 2000s, the Berlin School filmmakers of the 2000s - Petzold, Arslan, Schanelec, Köhler. These filmmakers delved into the anxiety of living in the modern world where mundane reality is just as scary as spirits and monsters.

Backrooms creator Kane Parsons, a teen who grabbed and expanded the now famous 4-chan meme of an empty old furniture store with eerie yellow walls and fluorescent overhead lights, made series of contents entirely using Blender and Aftereffects, where endless corridors leads you to nowhere and some unknown creature chasing you. Banking on digital pixel nostalgia and shaky POV camera of the 90s indie boom, Parsons helped create an urban lore where the Gen-Zers can congregate online.

Seeing the potential for the internet liminal horror on social media and videogames cum movie successes (the most recent example would be Skinamarink, Exit 8), A24 gave Kane Parsons, now a 20 years old, 10 million dollars to make a feature film with legit actors - Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. The result is a noble first attempt, albeit an underwhelming one.

Ejiofor plays Clark, who owns a failing furniture store - Captain Clark's Ottoman Empire (its confusing, discordant name is pointed out by his young part-time employees), in a strip mall in suburban southern California. He is an aspiring architect who is unhappy with life's disappointment. He regularly has sessions with his therapist Mary (Reinsve) where he reveals his past - his failure in life turned him into drinking and his wife left him. He has anger issues. In turn, Mary has her own demons, as seen in spurts of flashbacks and nightmares - her mentally unstable mother prevented her from going out and they become shut-ins (newspapers covering the entire windows kind), in their now demolished apartment. She wrote a book about opening windows in life which Clark religiously listens to (as an audio book on a tape).

Clark finds the backrooms by accident while sleeping in his furniture store showroom, when flickering overhead store lights lead him to check the circuit breakers, then discovers a sliver of light beaming through the basement wall. He marks the entrance with a blue painter's tape and recruits his two young employees, armed with a video camera and ropes to investigate the endless labyrinth of the backroom. And it goes horribly wrong.

Mary stops in the furniture store, after Clark misses his appointment and leaves a cryptic message on her phone. She finds Clark has been mapping the labyrinth of backrooms. And he encourages her to explore with him.

There is so much potential in Backrooms. The dizzying labyrinth, much of it actually physically built for the film, is impressive for its originality and surrealism - the impossible angles, strange walkways, ominous dark corners & random piles of furniture. With the help of eerie sound design and score, Backrooms provide some very unsettling vibes. The creature designs give some very scary moments also. And the implication of the creatures and scattered clothes and furniture and absurd landscape that these are our memories of a place, warped over the years by misremembering and misinterpretation, is an intriguing one.

But if Skinamarink was any indication, you can't make a feature film just with the vibe alone, unless it's short, jumbled youtube clips intended to be unnerving, with no need for narrative threads or any coherence. Here, the narratives/character backgrounds are forced and uninteresting. By the time the abrupt ending rolls around, Backroom feels like a missed opportunity - you want more of the backroom explorations, not the underdeveloped, stereotypical characters. The film is a 1990s digital nostalgia, remembered, reimagined by a 20-year-old who didn't live through the timeframe, instead, grew up on the internet and videogames. It's just vibes, distorted and context free, just like the inhabitants of the backrooms. But just like the original digital catnip Parsons created, I want more.