Twenty years ago, I left my village in La Mancha, and nearly 15 years ago I left Spain. While I was developing this story between Germany and Greece, I realized that the film was in part a search for my own identity. Like Roque’s father, mine was a bullfighting enthusiast. He died when I was young, leaving me with unanswered questions: Did he know I was gay? Would he have cared? Who was he outside his role as my father? I wrote this story to make peace with these absences and to understand what it means to belong.

I grew up in the 1990s with no visible queer role models and I endured homophobic bullying in school, experiences that sowed my deep need to tell this story. While developing it, I talked with local teens and the Romanian community in my village, which currently makes up one-fifth of the young people and is barely represented in Spanish cinema. Their stories broadened my perspective on identity, migration and roots.

The film covers four deeply personal interconnected topics: the search for home and identity; a critical reflection on violence; a positive representation of queer and immigrant experiences in rural settings; and a celebration of friendship. These components intertwine in “El canal de La Mancha”, a tale of two non-conforming adolescents who learn to live with their difference in a place not designed for them.

“El canal de La Mancha” is not a geographic space, however, it is rather an emotional state: the journey of an emotional bond in upheaval. In a loving yet cruel, modern yet traditional, matriarchal yet sexist society, friendship, like film, becomes an act of healing. This film is an homage to those who truly accept us, and in doing so, transform us.