Afternoons of Solitude
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“You're a giant, you're a warrior”
Overview
Afternoons of Solitude follows celebrated Peruvian matador Andrés Roca Rey through the charged ritual of modern bullfighting. Filmed across Spain’s grandest arenas, director Albert Serra (Pacifiction) captures the ceremony and cruelty of the corrida with his patient, painterly gaze. This observational documentary eschews narration or subject interviews, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions from the violence of spectacle and roar of the crowd. Moving between the quiet solitude of hotel rooms and the ecstatic violence of the ring, Serra crafts an unforgettable portrait of man and beast, the mythic and the mortal, theatre and death.
Winner: Golden Shell for Best Film
Winner, Best Documentary
“Muscular and ferocious”
“A remarkable, multifarious work”
“A daring and truly extraordinary film”
Why See This Film
Part ethnographic mondo documentary (complete with bloodshed), part Hemmingwayesque lyrical ode to hypermasculine performance- Afternoons of Solitude is confronting and livewire stuff. This is Catalan-born Serra's first documentary feature, but fans of his filmmaking approach will recognise his signature in its tonal whiplash, jumping between the grisly, ritualistic theatre of the arena and the banality of commuting between hotel rooms.
The session on Sunday April 12th will be followed by a 30-minute recorded in-conversation between the filmmaker and academic (and Serra specialist) Daniel Fairfax.
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