NOCTURNE

Nocturne is a short documentary by Malva Soler, created in collaboration with Diego Garcia (Projekt Gestalten). The film explores identity and how the club becomes a sanctuary for those who inhabit their identity from the margins. It challenges social constructs and doctrinal repression to explore the boundaries of morality. It is currently in distribution.

SINOPSIS

After a night of dancing, Malva lets her body rest and recalls those moments of community. Yet one question lingers: why do we need to define ourselves when, just the night before, identity seemed such an ethereal concept?

Her search for answers converges with the story of Diego (Projekt Gestalten), a producer and DJ based in Berlin. Diego recounts how the Church attempted to redirect their sexual identity through exorcisms, and how that same place, years later, became one of their sources of artistic inspiration. Drawing from what they have lived through and in search of a space of their own, Diego finds another temple: the dance floor—a liminal space that allows for a suspended state in which the body enters a trance and social constructs, tied to morality and political correctness, dissolve, making self-expression possible without fear. It is here that Malva and Diego speak the same language, share this sense of freedom, and dance together.

But everything fractures with the memory of the death of a friend who was also connected to the dance floor, bringing us face to face with the double edge of hedonism: the desire to live or to escape, the constant pull between eros and thanatos. A raw sense of transience emerges—experiencing this nocturnal transfiguration as something pure and pleasurable, yet impermanent. From this arises the question that runs through the film:

Is the night a place to inhabit, or merely a space that exists in the imagination?