Music videos / 2025

Hold the Light

For Wren Hollis / Directed by

A solo dancer moves through haze and a single backlight, finding the shape of Wren Hollis's slow-building ballad one gesture at a time.

Wren Hollis wanted the video to behave like the song: almost nothing, then everything. Inés built it around one dancer, one source of light and a stage full of haze, and let the choreography do the work a set usually does.

We shot over two days in a blacked-out studio in east London. Joaquín Ferrer placed a single fixture behind the dancer, cold white for most of the song and red for the bridge, and rode the haze by hand so the beam stayed solid without swallowing the figure. Everything was shot at 48 frames per second on a long lens from the back of the room, which flattens the space and keeps the dancer a shape rather than a face.

Celeste Ruiz rehearsed the choreography to the track at double speed so the movement would land on the beat once slowed down. Freya Lund cut in long sections, and Simon Achterberg graded half the film to black and white, saving colour for the moments the vocal opens up.

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

Hannah Reyes

Producer

Rosa Valente

Choreographer

Celeste Ruiz

Director of photography

Joaquín Ferrer

Editor

Freya Lund

Colourist

Simon Achterberg

Next film

Southbound

Gatehouse Films / Short film

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