In his feature debut, Lovers Sleep Alone, screened in San Sebastián’s New Directors section, Massih Parsaei follows Iman, a queer Iranian exile who drifts through the German capital in search of connection while carefully concealing his true self. The Iranian-born, German-based filmmaker talked to us to break down the movie.

Cineuropa: The film maintains a striking balance between coldness and warmth, distance and proximity. Was that contrast present from the outset?
Massih Parsaei: Definitely. Iman is always moving through spaces that do not really accept him. There is a coldness around him, but within his solitude, he creates closeness and warmth for himself. That contrast also determined the production [schedule]. There were repeated suggestions that we should shoot in summer, but I insisted on winter. The film needed to feel cold.

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The film is intimate, yet we never fully know who Iman is. How did you approach that contradiction?
Intimacy is precisely what is missing from his life, so he creates it. Even the stories he invents are a way of producing moments of closeness. When he watches the sleeping truck drivers, he is seeking an intimacy that requires no answer from the other person. He can give something without needing a reaction. Cruising operates in a similar way: it offers closeness while allowing him to remain protected.

Berlin’s urban landscape is central to the film. Did you want Iman to become part of it, or even disappear into it?
I wrote many versions of the screenplay, but something was always missing. Eventually, I realised that the film needed a second protagonist. Since Iman is so alone, that protagonist became the city. My cinematographer, production designer and I spent around a year scouting and photographing locations. I would then return alone and write scenes for those particular spaces. We kept rewriting as we discovered how the city behaved and how Iman’s body behaved within it.

The film repeatedly shows men sleeping, Iman caring for other men and explicit sexual encounters. Were you exploring male intimacy and vulnerability?
With the truck drivers and the older man, Iman is again looking for intimacy where the other person is vulnerable and cannot respond. There is also a fear of masculinity connected to his past. I never regarded the truck-driver scenes as sexual. Iman cannot sleep, and he observes these peaceful, slumbering men, who are often physically large and conventionally masculine. The cruising scenes introduce another kind of intimacy, but the desire to approach someone without fully exposing himself remains.

Iman offers different versions of himself to the people he meets, almost as though he does not want to be seen. Where does that urge come from?
He is still discovering who he is within a new social system. Queer people often experience a late coming of age. For people of colour, or those raised in Islamic countries, there can be another task: detaching yourself from everything you were taught you should be and discovering who you want to become. Iman still carries those inherited ideas. His lies are partly experiments with identity and partly a mechanism that protects him from who he is.

How did you work with Pooyesh Frozandeh on such an elusive character?
Pooyesh was excellent. After a long casting process, we met for coffee and immediately decided to make the film together. Although I had written the screenplay, we were both discovering how Iman behaved. We deliberately avoided constructing a detailed psychology for him or explaining his past, just as the film itself does. Instead, we did many takes until a gesture or movement felt right. Through that process, we gradually learned who he was.

How does Lovers Sleep Alone relate to the increasingly hostile political climate surrounding immigrants?
That is at the core of the film. Iman is marginalised not only as an Iranian immigrant, but also as a queer man. He enters spaces that do not accept him or that fail to recognise him fully. I have lived in Europe for a long time, yet that feeling has never disappeared. As anti-immigrant hostility grows, I become more anxious that the situation is worsening and becoming more frightening. That anxiety is ultimately why I made the film.