Afternoons of Solitude

Director: Albert Serra

2024 / 125min / DCP

Serra’s visceral yet elegant documentary portrait of young, Peruvian-born superstar torero Andrés Roca Rey sees him risking life and limb on the clock, and in unglamorous off-hours traveling via minibus between arenas with an extensive, officious entourage. A privileged, patiently observed perspective on the flamboyant showmanship, ritualized grace, and terrible violence of bullfighting, that most controversial of the sporting arts, its time-honored spectacle of man’s cultivated, calculated intelligence facing down an elemental force of primal animal aggression, a spectacle that ends, invariably, in a welter of hot, bubbling blood. “Impressionistic and intimate… Perhaps the most immersive encapsulation of tauromachy yet achieved in cinema.” —Sight & Sound

Distributor: Grasshopper Film

Part of Grasshopper Film at 10