2025   Romería   Film   (Elástica Films) Directed byCarla Simón.   Produced by Elástica Films.  

Romería, directed by Carla Simón, follows Marina, an 18-year-old girl who was adopted as a child. She travels to Vigo to meet her biological father’s family for the first time. Both of her parents died of AIDS, and their past is surrounded by silence, stigma, and unresolved pain linked to drug addiction.

While there, Marina pieces together her parents’ story through her mother’s diary and the relationships she begins to form—especially with a cousin. As she uncovers fragments of the past, she tries to understand who her parents really were and, in turn, make sense of her own identity.

At its core, the film explores memory, family secrets, and the search for one’s origins.

Director & Writer: Carla Simón

Producers: María Zamora and collaborators from Elastica Films

Production companies: Elastica Films, Avalon P.C.

Director of Photography: Hélène Louvart

Music: Ernest Pipó (frequent collaborator in Simón’s work)

Editing: Ariadna Ribas

Choreographer: Tuixén Benet

Assistant Choreographer: Anna Macau

Main cast:

Llúcia Garcia as Marina

Mitch (key supporting role)

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Tuixén Benet

EDUCATION

Tuixén Benet is a choreographer, dance-film director, and educator based among Barcelona and Los Angeles, whose work moves fluidly between stage, screen, and pedagogy. Her practice explores choreography as a cinematic, social, and spatial language, engaging bodies, cameras, and collectives as co-authors of meaning. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Choreography and Interpretation Techniques from the Institut del Teatre of Barcelona (2013) and a Master of Fine Arts in Film Directing from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) (2020). Her training bridges contemporary dance, film direction, and visual storytelling, further expanded through specialized studies in video dance and body poetics in Spain and Mexico.

CHOREOGRAPHY FOR FILM

Tuixén Benet has maintained an extensive freelance career as a choreographer for music videos, fashion films, and commercials since 2010. Her choreography has been featured in productions shot across Spain, the United States, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Lebanon, Jamaica, Hungary, Romania, and Colombia, collaborating with internationally renowned artists such as Polo & Pan, Tame Impala, Phoenix, Juanes, Bomba Estéreo, Justice, Two Door Cinema Club, and Javiera Mena, among many others. She recently choreographed the film Romería by Carla Simón. Her work has been commissioned by leading production companies and global brands, resulting in a body of work that balances strong physicality with cinematic precision.

LIVE CHOREOGRAPHY

From 2010 to 2015, Tuixén Benet was the founder and co-director of the dance company Les filles Föllen, alongside Margherita Bergamo. Together, they created and performed stage and video works presented at major cultural institutions and festivals across Europe and North America, including MACBA, Mercat de les Flors, Matadero Madrid, Kumu (Tallinn), Le Lieu Unique (Nantes), Zebulon (New York), and Zoofest (Montreal). Their creations, such as Entrance With Charge, Unter der Schönen Haut, Escena Simultánea, and Projecte13, were recognized with multiple awards and grants, establishing the company as a significant voice in contemporary performance and experimental choreography.

Tuixén Benet has also choreographed large-scale live performances and tours, notably for El Guincho and for the international tours of Chilean artist Javiera Mena between 2014 and 2017. For Javiera Mena, she developed choreographic systems adaptable to different scales—from intimate stages to massive televised events—culminating in the 2016 Viña del Mar Festival performance, viewed by over 150 million people worldwide.

She’s also choreographed the opera La Gata Perduda at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, a participatory large-scale work involving over 3,500 community members. More recently, she directed the movement for the new experimental opera work by cabosanroque Mil Tres, Say Cheese that premiered in Teatre Lliure, Barcelona.

EXPERIMENTAL FILMMAKING

Tuixén Benet directs and choreographs dance-driven narrative works that investigate intimacy, ritual, collective movement, and the emotional architecture of bodies in space. Her films Lazarus, Aloma i Mila, and Solution for Sadness have been widely screened and awarded at international film and dance-film festivals, including Leeds International Film Festival, Palm Springs International ShortFest, BAFICI, Cinedans, Choreoscope, and many others. Her work has received numerous awards for choreography, cinematography, and contribution to the field of dance film, including a Flaherty Grant from CalArts and an Exceptional Contribution to Dance Film Award from Choreoscope. Her first feature-length dance film, Clausura, is currently in post-production.

TEACHING

From 2019 to 2024, Tuixén Benet has been a Dance and Film Special Faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts, teaching graduate and undergraduate students across disciplines. The courses include Dance Film Foundations, Dance Film Projects, When Screen Dances, Cinedance, Making Music Videos, and Film Production. Through these classes, she guided students from conceptual development to post-production, emphasizing visual design, embodied cinematography, interdisciplinary collaboration, and critical reflection on time, space, and performance in moving images. She has also served as a teaching assistant in film directing and as a guest instructor in cinedance and narrative film contexts. She is trained in experimental film techniques filming in cellulloid, hand processing and scanning.

FILM JURY

In addition to her artistic and academic practice, Tuixén Benet regularly serves as a jury member for international film and dance festivals such as Festival Internacional de Cine de San Sebastian, UK Music Video Awards, Dance Camera West, Choreoscope and Sicilia Queer Film Fest.