Spain

Fiction

Vicente, now 76 years old, came out of the closet and left his wife and daughter when he was 50. He has spent the last 25 years living happily with his partner in Maspalomas (Gran Canaria). However, everything is turned upside down when Vicente suffers a stroke that leaves him in a coma. When he wakes up, he is faced with an unexpected reality: he has been moved back to Donostia, and his daughter has placed him in a nursing home. Vicente decides not to offer any explanation about his sexual orientation. At first, he doesn’t think it’s necessary. And so, almost without realising it, Vicente returns to where he started – he goes back into the closet, renouncing everything he worked so hard on to achieve.

Directed by: Jose Mari Goenaga, Aitor Arregi
Written by: Jose Mari Goenaga
Produced by: Xabier Berzosa, Ander Barinaga-Rementeria, Ander Sagardoy, Fernando Larrondo
Cinematography: Javier Agirre
Editing: Maialen Sarasua
Production Design: Ander Sistiaga
Costume Design: Saioa Lara
Make-Up & Hair: Sergio Pérez Berbel, Karmele Soler
Original Score: Aránzazu Calleja
Sound: Alazne Ameztoy, Álex F. Capilla, Nacho Royo-Villanova
Visual Effects: David Heras, Eneritz Zapiain
Casting: María Rodrigo
Cast: Jose Ramon Soroiz (Vicente), Nagore Aranburu (Nerea), Kandido Uranga (Xanti)

Statement of the directors:
MASPALOMAS is a film about fragility. It is about how vulnerable we become when faced with the fear of not being accepted. It is about the difficulty of standing up for oneself in certain environments, especially when you no longer know where to begin, and how easily you can lose what you once fought so hard to attain.
It aims to reflect on psychological and physical confinement, erased identities and the difficulty of asserting oneself in certain environments. All of this is portrayed through the character of Vicente.
The idea for this film came from a moment of deep unease – the day when Jose Mari read a press article stating that gay people who had lived openly were often choosing to “go back into the closet” when they were admitted to a nursing home.
Coming out wasn’t easy for Jose Mari, and we know it was even more difficult for previous generations who lived under repression, fear and silence. Yet many of them still found a way to live their truth, often later in life and after great personal struggle. So how can someone end up renouncing what they fought so hard to embrace?
Initially, we thought we were telling the story of a man who “went back into the closet” after moving into a nursing home. However, we soon realised that it wasn’t that simple. The truth is that you never fully come out. It’s an ongoing process that is always shaped by your circumstances. Sometimes, you have to come out repeatedly. And sometimes, you simply can’t anymore. Sometimes, you may even choose not to. This is precisely the story we wanted to tell.
When portraying Vicente, it was crucial to accurately depict the two main environments in which he develops: Maspalomas and the nursing home. These are two very different contexts that will each influence the fate of our character in their own way. The contrast between these two environments was essential to telling this story.
From the first, we aimed to capture the atmosphere of freedom that a character like Vicente can experience, almost with anthropological interest. Regarding the latter, our focus was on the procedural and alienating aspects of a nursing home and their potential impact on our protagonist, while avoiding sensationalism and clichés. The nursing home is not “bad”; its workers try to do their job as best they can. The problem is surely not with them or the nursing home itself, but with a system that is above everything and everyone, and of which we are all victims and responsible parties.
Amidst this climate, it seems almost like a cruel joke of destiny that a mysterious virus has suddenly broken out, forcing us all into confinement. It’s as if we’ve all suddenly returned to our own particular closet, where fear reigns and social networks have become our only window to the outside world. This gives us a false sense of freedom. This is similar to the way Vicente uses dating apps to communicate with the outside world. But aren’t these windows precisely what makes us feel comfortable in our closets? Don’t they confine us more and more to the back of the closet?
We no longer go out to bars to flirt. We are becoming increasingly less present in the real world and increasingly present in the virtual world. Are we going to become less visible and less tangible, and end up as mere flows of data navigating networks under the promise of anonymity? These questions concern not only the homosexual community, but society as a whole.
For us, MASPALOMAS represents that fragile yet powerful moment when one decides whether to reveal or conceal oneself.

Production:
Irusoin
https://irusoin.com/en/

World Sales:
Film Factory Entertainment
https://www.filmfactoryentertainment.com/

Press/Social Media Agency:
Eleven PR