Director Ian de la Rosa has presented his debut feature film, Iván & Hadoum, at the Festival de Málaga, where it is competing in the Official Competition after winning the Teddy Award at the Berlinale. This intense contemporary romance, set in the greenhouses of Almería, invites viewers to reflect on themes such as identity, prejudice, and job insecurity.
 
In a press conference alongside its stars, actors Silver Chicón and Herminia Loh, the Granada-born director described his feature film “as an embrace, an invitation to a refuge of love and desire, the two main driving forces of a revolution that begins on a personal level but ends on a collective one.” In short, a classic love story, but starring characters who rarely occupy that role in film, he stated.
 
It is a co-production between Spain, Germany, and Belgium that tells the love story between Iván, a trans man, and Hadoum, a Spanish-Moroccan woman. The plot addresses universal, timeless, and very relevant themes, such as the fight against prejudice, poverty and abuses of power in rural areas, and the search for identity and belonging. His intention was to place the protagonist's trans identity within a romantic narrative where the main conflict is not identity itself, but rather the social and emotional conditions surrounding the relationship.

In this way, the script alternates between a romantic and social narrative and an intimate and profoundly human story that explores the complexities of identity, family ties, and the need to find one's place in the world. The film thus sits at the intersection of social realism and romantic melodrama. Through the relationship between its protagonists, De la Rosa has portrayed how love can become a space for personal emancipation from the structures that limit individual freedom.
 
The film draws inspiration from narrative structures akin to great tragic romantic stories, transposing that imagery to the contemporary context of southern Spain. In this sense, he added that the story functions as a kind of modern Romeo and Juliet, where differences in origin, class, and social expectations shape the protagonists' destinies.
 
De la Rosa stated that the project stems from a personal interest in exploring the stories that emerge when different cultures, generations, and life experiences intersect. To this end, the film relies on a very close perspective of its protagonists, allowing the viewer to follow their emotional evolution and understand their internal tensions. He also explained that the script seeks to capture the complexity of emotions and how personal relationships can transform when confronted with secrets, memories, and family expectations.
 
On the other hand, actor Silver Chicón explained the acting challenge of bringing to life a character who navigates between different realities and contradictory feelings with great emotional honesty. The key phase of his acting work was to construct a profoundly human figure, capable of showing both his vulnerabilities and his desire to understand his own story.
 
Throughout the screenplay, De la Rosa raises questions about identity and how people try to reconcile with their past. "That intimate dimension is what allows the viewer to connect with the characters beyond the specific circumstances they face," he reflected.
 
For actress Herminia Loh, "Iván & Hanoum" contains a very contemporary story about how people construct their identity amidst multiple cultural and familial influences. Along these lines, she stated that the story addresses love as a form of resistance against a social and professional context that often pushes the characters to the margins. Actors Cisco Lara, Hadoum Benghnidira, Hugo Rodríguez, Esperanza Guardado, Nico Montoya, Úrsula Díaz, Erika Ruíz and Alina Logunovav complete the cast.
 
Finally, the director emphasized the importance of the region in the film. Filmed entirely in the province of Almería—among greenhouses, beaches, and desert landscapes—the story seeks to present a contemporary image of the region and the communities that live and work there. One of its objectives was to portray this territory authentically, moving away from the exoticised view with which it has often been depicted.