U.S. Trailer for Albert Serra’s Mesmerizing Matador Portrait Afternoons of Solitude

Following up his career-best work with the mesmerizing Pacifiction, Albert Serra returns just a couple years later with a work of non-fiction. Afternoons of Solitude is a mesmerizing portrait of bullfighting star Andrés Roca Rey, set over just a handful of extended sequences in which we bear witness to the primal connection made between man and animal. Donning his majestic traje de luces (aka suit of lights), Rey spends all-consuming time in the ring that’s filmed with both a nervous calm and sense of transfixing beauty as his blood-splattered matador costume starts blending with the striking red ring to which he’s confined. With Serra’s formal conviction, what could have been a standard documentary on the process becomes something altogether transcendent. Now set for a June 27 release beginning at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center, Grasshopper Films has released the new trailer and poster.

David Katz said in his review, “To make a UK-centric reference: Albert Serra’s new film Afternoons of Solitude is more akin to two hours of Sky Sports than you’d expect from the guy who once made Story of My Death. Following the rules, if not the spirit, of ever-festival-fashionable observational and direct cinema, we spend most of its runtime in long takes observing Spanish bullfighting rings, our eyes focused on Andrés Roca Rey, a Peruvian “exemplar” of the sport engaged in utmost, ritualized savagery. We’re very sensitized to the constructed and artificial nature of documentary now, but Serra’s prime achievement here is to achieve an objectivity of perspective. Commanded by DP Arthur Tort, it’s not a leering camera, and the editing patterns don’t cut to close-ups coercing us into disapproval, to achieve a a rapport where we can agree “this is awful, isn’t it.” It suggests an anthropological record of a pastime deserving our deference and grudging respect, yet equally an indictment of something barbaric and finally absurd. Roca, shown in power stance with his eyes focused and vulnerable like the poor bull’s, seems both hero and villain of the piece, but those categories also fail to apply here. Framed sculpturally and monumentally, as a body in cinematic space, he merely is.”

See the trailer and poster below and read our interview with Serra.