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Xavier Marrades is a Spanish filmmaker and editor whose work blends poetic documentary with personal and political memory. He lived in New York City for many years and continues to maintain a close connection to the city. He lives and works between Spain, NYC and Brazil.
Murmurations is Xavier Marrades’ third short film — the result of a process that has been both deeply personal and filmic, slowly taking shape over several years. It began during the darkest days of the COVID lockdowns, when the silent sky over his Spanish hometown was suddenly animated by the mesmerising flight of starlings. In that solitude, their movement opened a path back to his own experience of living with HIV — and to the memory of those who lived and died through the most brutal years of the AIDS pandemic.
The film originates from that isolation, yet moves in the opposite direction — as a gesture toward the collective. Like the starlings — who move as one to evade a peregrine falcon — it reaches for connection as a form of survival and resistance against external threat, whether a
virus or a political system that persistently neglects vulnerable lives.