A Summer Where Time Refuses to Move On

Read Time:5 Minute, 25 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Forastera
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Genre: Drama, Coming-of-Age
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 37m
Director(s): Lucía Aleñar Iglesias
Writer(s): Lucía Aleñar Iglesias
Cast: Zoe Stein, Lluís Homar, Núria Prims, Nonni Ardal, Martina García
Where to Watch: shown at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: A story set in Mallorca, Spain, could easily fall into postcard simplicity, but FORASTERA bends that toward something more unsettling. Lucía Aleñar Iglesias utilizes her debut feature to craft an atmosphere where grief, adolescence, and memory intertwine, becoming indistinguishable from one another. It is a coming-of-age film that never feels conventional—grief isn’t a backdrop here but a force that shapes identity, distorting how family members see one another and, in turn, themselves.

The story centers on Cata, played by Zoe Stein, whose summer holiday with her sister and grandparents is upended. What might have been a passing tragedy instead becomes a transformative presence, not only in how the family copes but in how Cata slowly, almost imperceptibly, steps into the unexpected role. It starts with clothes, then gestures, until it feels as though identity itself is porous. Stein delivers a performance that communicates more through silences than words, her body language suggesting both the uncertainty of adolescence and the eerie confidence of someone suddenly carrying another life within her.

This is not a traditional ghost story. Aleñar Iglesias makes clear that her interest lies less in scares and more in the idea of haunting as an emotional construct. The ghost is not a specter, but a lingering presence —a projection shaped by longing and imagination. In this way, FORASTERA recalls films like David Lowery’s A GHOST STORY in how it transforms grief into visual language rather than resorting to horror conventions. The house, filled with vintage objects and sun-streaked rooms, becomes both sanctuary and trap, a place where time feels suspended.

Lluís Homar as the grieving grandfather Tomeu brings weight to the story’s other side. Where Cata channels her loss into something like a mirror, he sinks into languor, clinging to rituals that have lost their center. Their relationship, both tender and uncomfortable, forms the core of the film. The shared dress-up sequences, quiet conversations, and unspoken acknowledgments of what they’ve lost highlight how two different generations process the same wound. Núria Prims, as the mother Pepa, adds further tension by breaking the fragile bubble of grief with her pragmatic approach.

The Mediterranean setting is stylized but not idealized—the bright skies and endless sea hold as much melancholy as beauty. The cinematography by Agnès Piqué Corbera captures this duality, framing wide exteriors as though they are postcards while infusing interiors with a suffocating stillness. What could be a summer of freedom instead becomes a time loop, a suspended season where nothing moves forward.

The score, composed by Anna von Hausswolff and Filip Leyman, works similarly. Rather than announcing emotion, it seeps into the film like memory itself—sometimes somber, sometimes ethereal, never overwhelming.

Aleñar Iglesias resists easy answers. She doesn’t frame Cata’s transformation as pathology, nor does she indulge in melodrama. Instead, she allows ambiguity to hold space. Is Cata healing, or is she disappearing into someone else’s life? Is Tomeu finding solace, or is he enabling a delusion? These questions remain unresolved, which is part of the film’s strength. The refusal to simplify reflects how grief operates in reality—messy, nonlinear, and resistant to straightforward explanations.

The deliberate pacing and stylized atmosphere may frustrate viewers seeking traditional narrative arcs. Some scenes linger, and while this enhances the mood, it can test one's patience. Stein’s performance ensures the film never drifts into abstraction. She embodies adolescence as both vulnerability and transformation, carrying the weight of a grandmother’s memory while still holding onto the awkwardness of being a teenager. This duality grounds the film in something recognizable, even as its atmosphere leans toward the uncanny.

FORASTERA thrives because it trusts its audience. It asks viewers to enter Cata’s summer, to experience how memory seeps into identity, and to recognize how grief reshapes the roles we play in our families. By the film’s end, the lines between pretending and becoming have blurred completely, leaving us with the unsettling realization that identity is never as fixed as we’d like to believe.

This is a haunting debut, one that suggests Aleñar Iglesias is a filmmaker with a future. She transforms a personal exploration of grief into a universal meditation on how families endure, how roles shift, and how adolescence is as much about loss as it is about growth. The film may not be for everyone, but for those who embrace it, it leaves an imprint as enduring as the Mediterranean sunsets it captures so well.

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[photo courtesy of 3CAT, FILMIN, FOX IN THE SNOW FILMS, IB3 TELEVISIÓ, INSTITUT CATALÀ DE LES EMPRESES CULTURALS (ICEC), INSTITUTO DE LA CINEMATOGRAFÍA Y DE LAS ARTES AUDIOVISUALES (ICAA), LA PERIFÈRICA PRODUCCIONS, LASTOR MEDIA, MALLORCA FILM COMISSION, SWEDISH FILM INSTITUTE, VILAÜT FILMS]

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