Massih Parsaei is a young Iranian filmmaker with extensive experience in short films who makes his feature debut with Lovers Sleep Alone, screening in the New Directors section of the San Sebastián International Film Festival. The film is a frosty tale, much like the Berlin winter in which it unfolds, but with a warm, beating heart that draws in viewers willing to embrace Parsaei’s sensitive gaze.

The primary focus of this story is Iman (Pooyesh Frozandeh), a young Iranian who has spent several years in Berlin, where he has pieced together a solitary life. So solitary, in fact, that he is often framed by the camera as just another element of the urban landscape. Our protagonist works as a carer, but also as a kind of assistant and jack-of-all-trades at a truck stop. He spends his free time in a park, seeking the warmth he lacks by cruising. His home is the place he goes only when he has no other choice.

In between, Iman fabricates a life that doesn’t exist, offering a different version of himself to everyone he interacts with. He tells a trucker he works with that the man he looks after is his father; he lies to a nurse, saying he plans to spend Christmas with his girlfriend; and he feeds false excuses to the man he regularly has sex with in the park, in order to push him away and avoid forging ties.

The way in which Parsaei’s camera observes Iman and the world that draws him in strikes a perfect balance between distance and intimacy, conveying his sense of isolation while still allowing us to feel close to him. Crucial to this is the superb work by Frozandeh, an actor who gives himself over completely and, through his presence, gestures and gaze, precisely channels his character’s emotional and psychological state.

Despite being an icy film with scant dialogue that keeps its characters far removed, Lovers Sleep Alone deftly places the viewer in just the right position to understand and empathise with its protagonist. This formal austerity and lack of frills also allow audiences to transpose Iman’s story to any other setting, to recognise his face in that of so many other migrants trying to get by in cities far from everything they once knew. Parsaei’s debut is thus a beautiful, rigorous work, endowed with great sensitivity and proving to be especially pertinent viewing in today’s sociopolitical climate.

Lovers Sleep Alone is a production by Film Five.