Afternoons of Solitude

A sublime documentary from Albert Serra, Afternoons of Solitude follows celebrated Peruvian matador Andrés Roca Rey through the charged ritual of modern bullfighting. Filmed across Spain’s grandest arenas, Serra captures the ceremony and cruelty of the corrida with his patient, painterly gaze. Moving between the quiet solitude of hotel rooms and the ecstatic violence of the ring, the Catalan filmmaker crafts an unforgettable portrait of man and beast, the mythic and the mortal, theatre and death. At once a harrowing ritual and a hypnotic fantasy, Afternoons of Solitude affirms Serra as one of contemporary cinema’s most fearless and incisive image-makers.