A gardener working at a resort on the island of La Palma decides to go to the top of the volcano to plant a garden amidst the ruins. Meanwhile, a young girl vacationing at the same hotel feels bored, reflects on utopia, and searches for happiness.
Year of production 2025 Length 19' CountrySpain/Italy/Australia Shooting Format Digital Aspect Ratio 1.66:1 Dialogue Spanish
DirectorFrancesco Mastroleo Production Companies La Selva, Panoramic Studio, Werner Herzog Foundation, Dianto Film, Meltedtape Films Producers Liliana Diaz Castillo, Marc Vila Bosch, Paulina Martinez, Werner Herzog Artistic Advisory Werner Herzog Writers Francesco Mastroleo, Darik Janik Director of Photography Darik Janik Editor Jacopo Maresca Color Correction Mattia Pezzimenti Sound Designer Pierpaolo Pantano Sound Mix Leonardo Raspolli Cast Maria Fernanda Durán Rodriguez, Quique Hernandez Perez
Festival selections Alice nella Città2025, Italy - World Premiere Visioni Italiane 2025, Italy - Special Mention Festival del Cinema Europeo 2025, Italy - Special Mention Laceno d'Oro International Film Festival 2025, Italy Director's Statement “This is my garden, here I will build my garden” – these are the words the protagonist repeats to himself, a gardener working at a huge resort on La Palma, Canary Islands. His “felicidad”? To create a garden among the ruins left by the volcano. This film is part of the “Bajo el volcán” project and is a tribute to the people of the island after the tragic volcanic eruption of 2021. During the location scouting, the master Werner Herzog guided my gaze through the shapes and landscapes of the island. I immediately noticed the presence of contrasting forces and characteristics: the power of nature, its constant underground movement, and the artificial mass attractions built for tourism – miniature reconstructions of nature, as if to control it; kitschy infrastructures designed for relaxation and leisure, set against the relentless and restless motion of the earth. The cast mirrors this duality: two souls, two very different bodies, wandering in search of their happiness, each chasing small utopias on an island that also dreams of being a utopia. The young tourist observes, letting us feel the island as it falls back asleep. The gardener, a man deeply affected in both mind and heart by the natural disaster, finds inspiration after seeing the girl and climbs the volcano to perform his daily act of creation. My characters are always solitary souls searching for their own place in the world. In this story, too, they seem to find each other for a fleeting moment—intertwining, recognizing one another. To bring order and shape to this complexity, I sought compositions that resembled tableaux vivants for most of the film. This approach allowed reality to slip into fiction, and fiction into reality, creating this specific hybrid language. With Darik Janik’s help, we created postcards of the island, like ordinary tourists trying to capture and share our impression with the audience. The stillness of the camera is broken only twice during the film by a tremor, signaling a shift in the film’s visual language toward handheld cinematography. This mirrors the underground and inner movements of the island and the characters in the “decisive” moments of Felicidad.
