General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Camino

Camino is a 2008 Spanish drama film written and directed by Javier Fesser about an eleven-year-old girl who, in the space of a few months, falls in love for the first time and dies of a terminal illness.¹ It was inspired by the real story of Alexia González-Barros, the youngest child of a family belonging to the Opus Dei, who died in 1985 at the age of 14 and whose beatification process was open at the time of the film's release.² The film premiered in the Official Section of the San Sebastián Film Festival, opened in Spanish theaters on 17 October 2008, and won six Goya Awards in 2009, including Best Film.³^•⁴^•⁵

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Javier Fesser (Madrid, 1964), his third feature after El milagro de P. Tinto (1998) and La gran aventura de Mortadelo y Filemón (2003)¹^•⁴
Release	Spain, 17 October 2008; later in Denmark, Hungary, Sweden, and Portugal between 2009 and 2011⁴^•¹
Runtime	143 minutes per Cineuropa; 138 minutes per Filmin and IMDb¹^•⁶
Cast	Nerea Camacho (Camino), Carme Elías (Gloria), Mariano Venancio (José), Manuela Vellés (Nuria), Lola Casamayor (Tía Marita)¹^•⁷
Production	Mediapro and Películas Pendelton; distributed by Alta Films¹
Goya Awards 2009	Six wins from seven nominations: Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress (Carme Elías), Best Supporting Actor (Jordi Dauder), Best New Actress (Nerea Camacho)⁵
Real-life basis	Alexia González-Barros, died 1985 at 14 after ten months of treatment; her cause of beatification was open when the film premiered²^•⁸

Spoilers

Plot

The film opens in Pamplona in June 2001, with the dying Camino surrounded by relatives, friends, priests, and medical staff in a hospital room, then moves back five months to show how her illness developed.⁹^•⁷ Camino is a girl from a middle-class family: her mother Gloria, her father José, and her older sister Nuria, a numerary (celibate lay member of Opus Dei living in its centers) of the Opus Dei.⁷ At a book fair she meets Jesús, a young man from a theater group and the cousin of her best friend Begoña, and falls in love with him.⁷ She wants to play the lead in a youth-theater production of Cinderella, a fantasy thread that runs through the film alongside her worsening condition.¹⁰

Pain in her neck leads to an operation and hospitalization with no improvement, and the film follows the family through her decline.¹¹ The mother, a woman of faith regarded as an example within her Opus Dei circle, teaches Camino to face cancer as a blessing from God, while the father offers unconditional affection.⁶^•¹² A priest and the prospect of a media-driven canonization process surround the dying girl, and the film presents the family, church, and hospital as institutions in which religion holds a strong position, particularly in a region like Navarra.¹³

The real story and the title

Fesser said he had carried the story for some twenty years and came to it through a book about Alexia written by the nun María Victoria Molins, after which he undertook extensive research into other cases of apparent sanctity and the workings of the Opus Dei.⁸^•¹⁴ Alexia González-Barros, the youngest of seven siblings, died in 1985 at the Clínica Universitaria de Pamplona after ten months of treatments that kept her bedridden; her religious education had been based on the ideals of the Opus Dei, and her beatification process was open at the time of the film's release.⁸

The title carries a double meaning: besides naming the protagonist, Camino is the title of the foundational book of the Opus Dei, written in 1934 by its founder Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer.⁴ An academic analysis notes that Fesser, out of an ethical obligation to preserve the real girl's identity, titled the film after Escrivá's book rather than using her name.¹³ Fesser insisted that the film is not a biography: "Camino is not Alexia, although it is dedicated to her as the extraordinary person she was," and he described the film as "not a diagnosis, but an X-ray" of the Opus Dei.³

Reception and controversy

The film created a media stir for its critical portrayal of the Opus Dei and religious fervor around a child's death.⁵ The Opus Dei's information office responded that the film "offers a distorted vision of faith in God, of Christian life, and of the reality of the Opus Dei," a statement issued by its director Manuel Garrido, the office's spokesman in Spain.¹⁵ Alexia's family did not recognize the film as based on her story.⁴

Awards. At the 2009 Goya ceremony in Madrid, Camino was the major winner, taking six of the seven Goyas for which it was nominated, including Best Film, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay; twelve-year-old Nerea Camacho won Best New Actress.⁵ It also won the José María Forqué Award for Best Picture and the Gaudí Award for Best European Film, and competed for the Golden Seashell at San Sebastián in 2008.¹⁶ It screened at festivals including Karlovy Vary, Vancouver, Mar del Plata, and Palm Springs.¹ On review aggregators it divided critics and audiences: Rotten Tomatoes recorded a 50 percent Tomatometer from eight reviews and a 77 percent audience score, while IMDb users rated it 7.4 out of 10.¹²^•¹⁷

Persuasion research. The film's contested message made it the subject of an experimental study on narrative persuasion. Researchers at the University of Salamanca randomly assigned 132 students to measure their beliefs about the Opus Dei and religion either before or after watching the film. Exposure to Camino induced a more negative attitude toward the Opus Dei and religion, weakened the link between participants' political self-placement and those beliefs, and identification with the protagonist played a mediating role in the persuasive effect.¹⁸

Production

The film was produced by Mediapro with Películas Pendelton and distributed in Spain by Alta Films; its sales agent was Goodfellas.¹ Alex Catalán was the cinematographer, Rafa Arnau and Mario Gosálvez wrote the music, and Fesser himself edited the film.¹ Shooting took place in Madrid, Almería, Guadalajara, Ciudad Real, and Navarra, with locations in central Madrid including the Viena Capellanes bakery on Calle Génova.¹⁹^•¹⁷ Nerea Camacho, making her film debut at twelve, was reluctant to have her hair cut for the role but accepted; Fesser cut his own hair in response.¹⁷

Other films titled Camino

A Costa Rican feature of the same year, El camino (2008), directed by Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez, is unrelated: a 91-minute drama in which Vicente, a biologist, fulfills his dream of living with his wife Abigail by the Caribbean sea, until a transnational company cancels his banana contract, his wife's half-sister Irene arrives unexpectedly, and an oil company moves into the region.²⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2000s › Biographical and historical drama films 2000s › Released 2006 to 2009

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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