Commercials / 2026

Ember

For Ostra / Directed by

A dance-led fragrance film for Ostra, in which colour arrives only as smoke and a single dancer burns brighter with every move.

Ostra's new fragrance is built on smoked amber, and the agency wanted a film you could almost smell. Inés took the idea literally: colour enters the film only as smoke, and every scene is a dancer working inside a cloud of it.

We shot for two days on a theatre stage in Madrid and half a day in a park outside the city. Joaquín Ferrer lit the stage with hard top and side light gelled to match each smoke colour, so cloud and light read as one thing. Smoke was released by hand from the wings on cue, and Jun Ito built the choreography around how long each colour holds before it drifts out of frame, roughly eight seconds.

The blurred passages were made in camera, with a slow shutter and the dancer moving faster than usual, not added in post. Freya Lund cut to Lior Ashkenazi's score in three movements, and Eun-ji Park kept the blacks deep enough that the smoke seems to come from nowhere.

A driver's hand on the steering wheel as the wipers clear rain from the windscreen at night.
A driver's hand on the steering wheel as the wipers clear rain from the windscreen at night.
A driver's hand on the steering wheel as the wipers clear rain from the windscreen at night.

Credits

Director

Inés Albarrán

Executive producer

Marcus Bell

Producer

Rosa Valente

Choreographer

Jun Ito

Director of photography

Joaquín Ferrer

Editor

Freya Lund

Colourist

Eun-ji Park

Original music

Lior Ashkenazi

Recognition

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