Spanish auteur Albert Serra always gets strong reactions to his films, and that’s how he likes it. His latest, his first documentary, Afternoons of Solitude, has been no different. The bullfighting doc won the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Golden Shell for best film in the fall and continues to tour the festival circuit.
Right now, Serra is attending the 15th edition of the Luxembourg City Film Festival where he is a member of the jury led by Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof that also includes the likes of VFX expert Jeff Desom (Everything Everywhere All at Once) and screenwriter Paul Laverty. The festival has also featured masterclasses by British star Tim Roth and Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar.
Serra likes to hit viewers with images they will remember. “It’s all or nothing. The idea is that film has to be a real experience,” he told THR in between Luxembourg film screenings about his distinctive film style. “Either you love it or you hate it. But even if you hate it from an anthropological point of view, there is a lot of information.”
Serra highlighted that a type of behavior or spectacle, such as bullfighting, can get very different reactions from audiences depending on where in the world it takes place. ”If this ritual exists in the Third World, we say, ‘Oh, very nice.’ It’s seen as something pure,” he argued. “But if we see it in western society, we say, ‘They are crazy. They are sadists.’ But this paradox is what interests me.”
Serra’s visual style is all about allowing viewers to see and notice things they couldn’t with the naked eye. “The goal is to really get inside and to put up the camera and reveal things that you cannot see with your eyes and try to understand what’s going on there,” he explained. “I have innocence, a real curiosity to be surprised, as in my previous films. I want to be surprised when I do a film.”
What does that mean for his fiction features? “I want the actors to surprise me,” Serra told THR. “I want to see things I don’t know. For that reason, I create a little bit of chaos during my shoots – a little bit more than a little bit os chaos.” He laughs. “I want something to happen that’s not in my mind. I like that because it adds more complexity.”
Serra shared that he uses camera operators without assistants. “They take care of everything, even the tripod,” he emphasized. “I want things to happen in front of the camera, and I try to create a system that is able to capture when things happen.”
And things do happen in Afternoons, including gory things. “Do you think the film can go to the Oscars?” Serra wondered out loud. “Or is it too crazy? Is it too violent?”
Time will tell. Grasshopper Film recently acquired North American distribution rights for the film, which had its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival late in 2024. It will open June 27 at Film at Lincoln Center in New York, followed by other cities. “Serra trains a patient and poetic lens on the dazzling pomp and devastating brutality of bullfighting,” Grasshopper said.
Talking to THR, Serra also highlighted “a long tradition of appreciation” for bullfighting in the U.S., mentioning the likes of Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway as past fans.
Albert Serra
Courtesy of Margaux Gatti/Luxembourg City Film Festival
Some people leave a Serra movie wondering about the filmmaker’s opinions on what he has put on the screen. And that is by design. “What is important is your opinion as a spectator, not mine. Because if I have one, I prevent you from having yours,” he explained. “In cinema and in the visual arts in general, with images, there is always an inner ambiguity, because there are no rules for how to perceive an image, understand an image. You make your conclusions.”
What does this mean for Afternoons? “Specifically with controversial subjects and violent images, I think you have to be even more careful to leave space” for viewers, Serra said. “For that reason, the film is very repetitive. It’s following or copying the structure of a ritual that is based on repetition to give you space to assimilate and to feel.”
Serra also likes repetition and other structural elements in his fiction features. “I use moments that I call anti-climax moments,” the director tells THR. “These moments are ones where you start to have a little bit of a physical [reaction], you start to move in your seat. I think this is something that is only possible in cinemas, with the big screen, because at home with the smaller screen, you would reject it. But on the big screen, it’s so detailed, especially in my films, it’s so complex. It’s calculated in the edit to create a sensation in your body. It’s something that [streaming] platforms will never do.”
What does Serra want the anticlimax moments in his films do for viewers? “You start to open your mind and watch different things, or you watch in a different way,” and really take in the experience, he said.
Afternoons is balanced to include various key elements of bullfighting, including violence, in what Serra called “a calibrated way.” Machismo is another one of these elements as the doc repeatedly shows a star matador and his hero-worshipping entourage. “Narcissism is one of the subjects of the film,” the filmmaker said.
“This film is challenging people,” Serra emphasized about Afternoons. “Things are not that simple, things or sensations are not that schematic. Things have to be lived. You cannot reject an experience without having the experience,” he concluded. “From an artistic point of view, the images are very beautiful. Yes, they are strong, but they are beautiful. So you have the pure cinematic pleasure of the beauty of the image.”