MIFF Missive: Iron Winter & Romería

In their first conversation Nadine and Virat speak about two films which are pilgrimages of a sort. Kasimir Burgess’ Iron Winter, a documentary that takes the viewer into a land rarely seen — that of the nomadic Mongolian horse herders. An immersive and intimate piece of cinema which invites people to see a dying ancient tradition undertaken on the Mongolian Steppes during a five month journey herding horses to viable snow covered pastures. Transcendentally lensed by Benjamin Bryan Iron Winter is almost elegiac. The ravages of the climate crisis are making extreme conditions significantly more brutal and two young herders have to come to terms not only with the elements but also their futures.

Romería by Carla Simón translates to Pilgramage in English. An autobiographical fiction about Simón’s parents and the quest for an orphaned 18 year old woman to find remnants and memories about her father and his family in Vigo, Galicia. Simón’s avatar Marina (Llúcia Garcia) needs documentation for a university scholarship to study film in 2004, but whether she can convince her father’s patrician and evasive parents to accept her as Fon’s daughter is complicated by the way he died and their shame.

With her mother’s diary from 1984 through to 1986 guiding her she imagines their lives as young lovers, but it is a bittersweet imagining as Fon’s family obfuscate truths and misremember because his life has been erased. Again, a film that is spectacularly lensed by Hélène Louvart capturing Vigo and its islands. Will Marina be claimed or rejected? Will she find vestiges of her parents? Will she be able to prove she is more than a reminder of the hidden ghosts of the past?

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