Directed by Lydia Smith. Reviewed by Paul Sorrell 

This is a wonderful film. Although unpretentious in its documentary style, it gets to grips with some profound issues — perhaps the most important questions that people face on the personal, everyday level. Best of all, it presents us with a group of ordinary folk who ask the same questions, experience the same struggles and hold the same aspirations as ourselves.

In the film, we accompany several loose groups of pilgrims as they walk the 800km Camino across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. We become immersed in their lives, experiencing the hardships and joys of life on the trail, and listening to them as they tell of the ways in which this journey is changing their lives. Their motivations are mixed — albeit very different from their medieval predecessors, some of whom undertook the pilgrimage as an alternative to a prison sentence or as proxy for a wealthy patron.

Tatiana, a young Frenchwoman, is alone among our pilgrims in professing explicitly Christian motives. She walks with her brother, Alex, and toddler Cyprian, pushing him the length of the trail in a buggy! Young Tomás from Portugal falls in with a group of boisterous young men his own age and has a ball. Annie, an American woman in her late 40s, suffers from leg problems and struggles through the pain barrier, but is determined to finish. There are two elderly Canadians, Jack (a recent widower) and Wayne, who cement their lifelong friendship on the trail. Sam, a young Englishwoman with Brazilian connections, has come because her life is falling apart; for her the walk is therapy. Finally, Misa (Denmark) and William (Canada) begin the walk as strangers and end up as a couple.

We share life on the trail with these folk, experiencing the pain of constant blisters, the smell of unwashed bodies and the crowded dormitories full of snoring pilgrims. In the hostels or refugios, a dedicated band of hospitaleros invite their weary guests to share a common meal “as if you were one family.” Here, a simple footwashing ceremony has practical as well as spiritual significance; like so much about this film, it is authentically sacramental.

Perhaps the chief life lesson the Camino has to teach is about letting go, shedding some of the baggage we carry. Wayne expresses wonder that the trail requires so little: “You pack up everything you have and carry it on your back”. And Misa feels a sense of release and freedom after exchanging her bulky tramping pack for a day pack. This necessary process is made visible at the highest point on the trail where pilgrims are encouraged to leave a small token behind: the result is a small mountain of symbolic stones.

If the Camino is about shedding possessions, it is also about people, pain (and overcoming it) and the possibilities for change. As one pilgrim reflects, “it doesn’t end, because you take the Camino with you”.

Published in Tui Motu InterIslands magazine. Issue 206, July 2016.