Dustin Chang

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.

Chilean director Alicia Scherson adapts Roberto Bolaño's posthumous manuscript The Third Reich into Summer War, with the blessing of Lautaro Bolaño, the author's son, who serves 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, a former beefcake played by Rutger Hauer, in Chile.

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.