All Backwards

Directed by Merette van Hijfte and Samuel van Keeken
Same Worldwide, 2025
Run time: 13 minutes

Reviewed by Amy Horton | Warrenton, MO

The Medieval pilgrim, it is said, began their journey at their doorstep, and upon reaching their holy destination, retraced their footsteps to return home. Some readers may have met a few pilgrims coming and going. And some of you may have even made such a journey. (I personally know two pilgrims who recently did.) As unconventional as a Camino reverso might seem to many, the documentary short film All Backwards considers an even more unlikely journey: one walked literally backward.

The film, presented in a mix of Spanish and English voiceover with English subtitles, documents a performance work by two Dutch artists. Over two months, they traversed 600 kilometers along the Camino Francés, facing eastward while they moved westward.

A voiceover explains: “What they hope to find is what we’ve lost. The courage, the joy, and the audacity to step lightly and stirred into the unknown.” The film shows that to walk backward is a commitment to the practice of presence: advancing as you put one foot behind the other requires renewed mindfulness with each footfall. 

“The funny thing about walking backwards,” Merette van Hijfte recounts in the film, “is that you are facing the people that are approaching you. In doing so, you can see each other for a long time.” And yet, interactions with other pilgrims are only fleeting, as most typically ambulating pilgrims progress at regular speed, while, as the creators shared in an email exchange, walking backwards you move at one-third the normal pace. Likewise, for the retro-walking pilgrim, quintessential Camino landmarks such as the Pyrenees, Alto del Perdón, the meseta, Cruz de Ferro, O Cebreiro, and Monte do Gozo, don’t come into view, but rather fade away. 

Performance art relies on the elements of time, space, the body, the artist’s presence, and the relationship with the audience to challenge traditional conventions. Many of us who have made a Camino know that a walking pilgrimage itself already challenges many conventions of modern travel and have come to appreciate the gifts this slow form of travel bestows. And yet amidst the thrum of technology, the race for beds, contemporary conveniences, and changing pilgrim norms, one can easily become distracted and lose focus.

All Backwards doesn’t so much suggest that pilgrims must retro-walk the Camino to truly experience it. Rather, it invites us to step forward into pilgrimage with the same presence and intentionality we would give to stepping backward towards our destination.

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