This music video is set against the backdrop of a rural Spanish salt mine in the 50s. Filmed in 16mm black and white, it tells the story of Jesús, a salt miner whose young daughter dies in a tragic accident.
Unable to cope with her death, his grief drives him into obsession – to the point where he begins seeing his daughter as a Marian apparition. As his obsession grows, he gains a cult like following within his village, with others keen to see the Virgin for themselves.
The story ends with Jesús cutting out his own eyes in order to become blind to the world, and keep living with visions of his daughter in his own mind.
Director’s Vision
When I received this song, I was absolutely sure that I wanted to talk about the concept of loss, from an emotional and spiritual point of view, examining the concept of losing your loved ones and the obsession that comes with the sorrow, from different angles.
The rhythm of the song is close to a waltz. That together with its dark vibe connected me directly with strong cinematic imagery. But above the narrative and the look and feel, my main goal was to dig into the Andalusian identity.
I was born and bred in Andalusia, but I left almost 20 years ago. It was very important for me to express how loss is experienced in my homeland. To describe our characteristic identity, sometimes passionate, sometimes absolutely crazy, with an important influence of the Catholic religion and all the cultures who conquered the region hundred of years ago.
It’s an interesting paradox how this project that talks about loss has become a reconciliation for me, in the end, with my own cultural identity.
I first created a simple document with the storyline and some visual references. After that, during September, I met several times with the co-scriptwriter, Curro Piqueras, and we polished the script together. Also, I made an expense research of how the people in the 50 lived and died in small villages of Andalusia, and about the visual approach of this project.
The pre-production was quite tricky! I am based in London, Landia and Dude, the production companies, are based in Madrid and Milano, and I wanted to shoot this in Andalusia in the middle of a global pandemic!
I must say that I have found really nice and helpful people during this intense journey. Especially Pilar Angulo, the Art Director of the music video. She also introduced me to some of the main actors and helped us with some locations. I was very lucky to cast the actors I wanted to work with, Óscar Corrales, Cristina Domínguez and Alba López, all of them with great experience in features films. As well as Michal Babinec, a DoP with a strong cinematic eye.
And then we shot it! 2 days in between a small village called Villaluenga del Rosario and the salt mines of Chiclana in West Andalusia. It was pretty intense and beautiful at the same time, and we were so lucky again, 2 days after the wrap, the second COVID lockdown started in Spain.
Sometimes, when you want to do something new is better to look at the past. On a moment when every trendy music video is fast-paced and colourful, we decided to look back to the past, and make this slow drama-short film-music video in 16mm B/W inspired in Spain in the 50’s.