Spanish filmmaker Ian de la Rosa will unveil his debut feature Iván & Hadoum in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival. Set against the stark, plastic-covered greenhouses of Almería, the film traces a love story that unfolds through breath, skin and silence.
Iván & Hadoum is an exploration of desire as corporeal experience. De la Rosa has described the relationship between his protagonists as “underground” and “almost palpable,” built on gestures rather than declarations. Words, in this universe, tend to articulate obstacles, social, familial and professional, while affection is transmitted through glances and proximity. The director’s camera frequently lingers at breathing distance, crafting what he calls an “emotional 3D,” inviting viewers not merely to observe but to inhabit the lovers’ fragile space.
The film marks the screen debut of multidisciplinary London-based artist Silver Chicón, also known in performance circles as Prinx Silver, opposite musician and DJ Herminia Loh. Both performers arrive from vibrant queer and musical communities rather than traditional acting backgrounds, a casting decision that lends the film an unvarnished physicality. Their chemistry is intended to be sensed before it is understood, an attraction that, as the director insists, must be felt “in their bodies.”
De la Rosa draws inspiration from works as disparate as Zabriskie Point by Michelangelo Antonioni and Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power by Nina Menkes. The former’s sensual landscapes and the latter’s interrogation of the cinematic gaze converge in a project that seeks alternative forms of representing intimacy, particularly bodies and desires that have rarely seen themselves reflected on screen.
The narrative tension emerges from socio-economic realities rather than melodramatic contrivances. Both characters grapple with precarious working conditions in Almería’s agro-industrial sector, as the potential sale of a warehouse threatens livelihoods. Yet these external pressures never eclipse the central emotional arc. According to de la Rosa, plot developments are always tethered to feeling, especially Iván’s internal conflict, ensuring that structural shifts originate in the protagonists’ emotional decisions rather than imposed twists.
Almería itself functions as a character. Long mythologized as a cinematic backdrop for international productions, the region here appears as itself: a terrain suspended between desert aridity and a “sea of plastic” greenhouses that feed Europe’s supermarkets. The landscape simultaneously shelters and challenges the lovers, echoing the contradictions of their relationship. Literary references to Blood Wedding by Federico García Lorca and Puñal de claveles by Carmen de Burgos inform this portrayal of land as both destiny and witness.
Official synopsis:
In a greenhouse in southern Spain, Iván falls in love with his newly hired co-worker, Hadoum. But his long-awaited promotion interferes with their relationship, forcing Iván to decide what kind of person he wants to be.