Camino Skies
Curzon Home Cinema

Camino Skies is a gentle offering from New Zealand about a group of people walking the Camino de Santiago. There is more mud in it than sky: unlike the BBC’s now annual celebrity Easter pilgrimage, this is a film about the slow trudge of the long journey rather than the matey camaraderie of the group (though inevitably we do see how binding an experience it is). And the group goes the whole way too, 500 miles from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela, a walk that takes over a month. No helpful minibuses between sights of cultural interest for this lot.

The film doesn’t linger on lovely scenery either (though of course there is some) but rather on the rain, the insistent hum of traffic, the sweaty, plastic anoraks, the concrete bridge over a busy trunk road and the endless tramp along the edge of a dusty motorway. There are cramped hostels and a few harrowing blister shots.