Albert Serra's bullfighting documentary 'Afternoons of Solitude' wins Golden Shell at San Sebastián Film Festival

The documentary on bullfighting directed by Catalan Albert Serra won the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián Film Festival on Saturday night.

On his debut in the Basque competition, the filmmaker accompanied bullfighter Andrés Roca Ray to 15 fights and reports on his activities in his spare time.

Serra's is the third Golden Shell awarded to Catalan filmmakers after Isaki Lacuesta won in 2011 with 'Los Pasos Dobles' and in 2018 with 'Entre Dos Aguas.'

Patricia López Arnáiz from the Catalan coproduction 'Los Destellos' won the Silver Shell for best leading performance, and another Catalan coproduction, 'El Llanto,' won the Silver Shell prize for Best Director for Pedro Martín Calero.

After receiving the award, Serra said that winning the Golden Shell recognizes avant-garde cinema, a "way of filming documentaries," which is not "very obvious, moralist, childish, or lack clichés," he told media outlets in San Sebastián.

"I like this way because it is very realistic, very dramatic but comic at the same time, and which has a huge level of intimacy," even though he recognized he is not a "huge fan of documentaries" and chose bullfighting as it was the most "extravagant" topic out of all he had.

The Catalan filmmaker thanked bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey and his team because if it were not for them, the documentary "would not have existed."

"Without the full access and 100% availability that they allowed us, there would not have been a documentary," he said before adding that "the hard part was convincing them, the rest was done easily."

The documentary follows Roca Rey, one of the current idols in bullfighting, and offers two hours of a never-seen point of view of this controversial Spanish tradition.

During the film, several shots of wounded or even killed animals are mixed with scenes in hotel rooms where the spectator will see how the bullfighter gets ready before going to the arena. All the shooting spans around three years.

Animal welfare law – pets protected, hunting dogs and bullfighting exempted

An exemption for hunting dogs divided public opinion and the coalition government, while bullfighting continues to enjoy protected legal status as "cultural heritage."

Carlos Sánchez from pro-hunting organization Artemisan Foundation and Brooke Spurling from animal rights group AnimaNaturalis share their thoughts on the new law.

Listen to the Filling the Sink podcast episode published on September 30, 2023 to learn more.