Aritz Kortabarria

“El mal is basically a suspense story, where the audience senses that something disturbing is going to happen, but doesn't know how or when. But it also aims to get the viewer to question their own certainties, their capacity to love and to accept their own dark side.”

Inspired by films like “L’inconnu du lac” and “O Ornitólogo”, director Valentino R. Sandoli has created “Cruising,” a film that explores desire, erotism and flesh, using an almost voyeuristic style that mixes together with oneiric images that provides a metaphysic tone to the story. A man meets a group of young men while bathing in a lake at the end of summer, and he immediately falls for one of them, who seems to shine with his own light. He follows them into the woods, where he watches them as he finds them in different groups and sex scenes, until he arrives to the one he fell for.

Eloy, a 26-year-old man, remembers his first homosexual experiences in his hometown, entering a journey full of subjectivity and the anecdotes that have marked him.

A masked man plunges into the shadows of a remote darkroom nightclub. Speakers throb as bodies collide to the pulse of industrial music. Amid the crowd, his eyes locks onto a boy with a defiant, hypnotic gaze. To possess him is an all-consuming need—yet this obsession weaves a cage where hunter and prey become prisoners of their own hunger.

Six in the morning of a Friday like any other in Madrid. As usual, Carlos (20) and Dani (22) have been out all night, at a club. As part of their particular party ritual on the weekends, they decide to go to a gay sauna to continue the party.

An anxious brother delays telling his sister the truth about his upcoming wedding, an uncle takes drastic measures to "make a man" out of his closeted nephew, and a young man reflects on his turbulent teen years and the experiences that pushed him to leave his hometown behind. A powerful collection of shorts about the quiet ways in which we learn to stand up to prejudice and doubt.

Upon opening its doors, High became the first gay club in Bilbao and the first in Spain to have a dark room. Soon, men from all over began to inhabit its corridors and recesses, sharing the space with curious neighbors who peeked in to enjoy the pornographic films projected by its owner. Over the years, the parties, desires, and fears evolved, while High remained a silent witness to everything that happened inside.