Private Project

Arriba Beach

Summertime. Sam and Adele are on a beach holiday in Portugal. When Sam locks eyes with Miguel, the attraction between them throws Sam, Adele, Miguel, and his friend Santiago into a new configuration. The shelter of the nearby woods and the dynamism of the sea bring forth a night of secrets and revelations.

  • Nishchaya Gera
    Director
    Scar Tissue (2017), Look Baba I'm Happy (2019)
  • Nishchaya Gera
    Writer
  • Trevor Norris
    Writer
  • Martijn Krediet
    Producer
  • Nishchaya Gera
    Producer
  • Inês Heredia
    Key Cast
    "Adele"
  • Nuno Nolasco
    Key Cast
    "Miguel"
    Bem Bom (2021), Pedro e Inês (2018), Amelia's Children (2023)
  • Ben Starr
    Key Cast
    "Sam"
    You (Netflix, 2018-), Final Fantasy XVI (2023), Jamestown (2017-19)
  • Tomás Garcez
    Key Cast
    "Santiago"
  • Leonor Teles
    Cinematography
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    35 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    January 31, 2025
  • Production Budget:
    50,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, United States
  • Country of Filming:
    Portugal
  • Language:
    English, Portuguese
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.39
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • FEST - New Directors / New Films
    Espinho
    Portugal
    June 26, 2025
    World Premiere
    Grand National Prix
  • OutFilmCT - Connecticut's LGBTQ Film Festival
    Connecticut
    United States
    June 23, 2025
    North American Premiere
  • OutSouth Queer Film Festival
    Durham, North Carolina
    United States
    August 18, 2025
    NC Premiere
  • TIGLFF - Tampa Bay International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
    Florida
    United States
    September 14, 2025
    Florida Premiere
  • Oslo/Fusion International Film Festival
    Oslo
    Norway
    September 19, 2025
    Norwegian Premiere
  • Out On Film: Atlanta's LGBTQ Film Festival
    Atlanta
    United States
    October 1, 2025
    Georgia Premiere
  • OUTShine Film Festival
    Miami
    United States
    October 19, 2025
    Miami Premiere
    Best Short Film - Jury Award Runner-up
  • Entre Olhares - Mostra de Cinema Português
    Barreiro
    Portugal
    November 2, 2025
    Olhar o Mundo
  • Festival MixBrasil da Cultura da Diversidade
    São Paulo
    Brazil
    November 15, 2025
    South America premiere
  • Melbourne Queer Film Festival
    Melbourne
    Australia
    November 20, 2025
    Oceania Premiere
  • Roze Filmdagen
    Amsterdam
    Netherlands
Distribution Information
  • MUNA - Film Festival Distribution
    Distributor
Director Biography - Nishchaya Gera

Nishchaya Gera is a director and screenwriter currently based in Brussels. His short films have screened in over 100 film festivals worldwide and have won several awards, including a selection as a finalist for the Iris Prize for his first short, 'Scar Tissue' (2017). Displacement, queerness and the sexual politics of our times are central themes in his work. He is currently working on his first feature project 'The Taj Motel', which was selected for Torino Film Labs. Nish was born in India and has lived in Udaipur, New Delhi, Mumbai, New York City, Berlin and London.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Most stories start with a single image, a moment. The origin of this film was the first eye contact between Sam and Miguel, two strangers on a beach. Through this fleeting exchange we think we see everything we need to know, and we assume we know exactly where the story is going. But in this story, queerness is less about who you’re fucking and more about the way you can bend reality into something unforeseen.

Even though an apparently straight couple is the central part of this film, it’s not really telling a story about heterosexuality or showing queerness through a heteronormative lens. Rather, the film is saying: people live more queerly than you might assume. This kind of queerness can be a power. At first, it appears to be about a straight woman whose husband has hidden his desire for men, and who manipulates other men to get what she wants. But both Adele and Sam are already through the looking glass – they’re the ones helping Santiago and Miguel explore and be more playful in their lives. Like Adele and Sam, the film uses appearances to upend social norms, undoing expectations through play.

What might be seen as deception could lead to the story being read through a lens of moralism, which is something we wanted to work against. So much storytelling around questions of identity can be freighted with anxiety and fears and insist on always showing where the harm is coming from next, while pleasure and playfulness often take a back seat. Remembering the all-too-common experiences of watching a film waiting for disaster to happen, we wanted instead to make a film where the appearance of harm is never actualized. It’s a story about cruising for pleasure, about the way anyone, no matter how normative they might seem, is capable of crossing boundaries in order to flourish and become truer to themselves.

Why a beach? Why a hotel? Being on holiday, and especially in hotels, we become someone else. We outsource domestic life and become sovereign for a while. When you aren’t thinking about your basic needs, what do you actually want? In the liminal space of the beach and hotel, Adele and Sam are tricksters. They alchemize their own and other people’s desires. Tricksters are figures who confront people with their choices, pushing them through playful manipulation. They are neither good nor bad. They are agents of change and growth when things have become static and fixed. How can you bend the world in your direction and undo its material and contractual rules?

This is a puzzle for all of us. How can we cross boundaries without being frozen by fear of risk? How can we get what we want without the moralism that traps us in place, and which we use to trap others as well? In many parts of the film, the audience might feel invited to sort characters and actions into moral categories such as good and bad. But if only you suspend the wish to judge, perhaps we can all dream of queerer futures, where people stop policing others through their fears about desire.