It was the film called for scandal, the one identified at the beginning of the festival as the riskiest bet. The documentary Lonely afternoons is the approach to bullfighting by Albert Serra (Girona, 47 years old), a film that he had been working on for five years and shooting for three. And since this Saturday it is also the Golden Shell of the 72nd edition of the San Sebastián festival, in which, they say, it was a unanimous decision made quickly by the jury. He is not the only Spanish name on the list: debutant Pedro Martín-Calero has won ex aequo the best direction award for The crying, and the actress Patricia López Arnaiz has won the Silver Shell for best lead performance (at Zinemaldia there is no distinction by gender) for her work in The sparkles.
At a time when Spain is facing a deep debate about the future of bullfighting, the Ministry of Culture has suppressed the National Bullfighting Award, and when in Catalonia, the autonomous community in which he was born and resides Serra, bullfights are prohibited, Lonely afternoons It will give weapons and arguments to all sides, and will achieve love and hate among both bullfighting fans and its detractors. Serra has managed to square the circle on screen with images of Peruvian Andrés Roca Rey’s bullfights and his conversations in the minibus with his crew before and after the tasks. Serra said that in those phrases, in the instructions given to the right-hander by his subordinates, a lot of poetry was hidden, “there are echoes of García Lorca.”
The Catalan’s camera enters the hotel room where the bullfighter is dressed, a fascinating moment due to the male-female ambivalence, or does not detach itself from the agonies of the bulls. The filmmaker defines himself as a fan of bullfighting, but he assured that in cinema the author cannot impose his ideology, and on screen he reflects bullfighting with all its faces and its polysemy. The film will be released in Spain in the first half of 2025, probably after it is launched in France. For the jury, “Solitary afternoons” opens debates”, something that Serra has always defended. “It is a story that comes from afar, and the San Sebastián festival always supported me,” the director recalled with the award in his hand. “And I thank the protagonists of the film for letting me get closer to their privacy. That in this way he achieved that something genuine that not so many films have, and that only auteur cinema shows.”
The rest of the awards deliberated by the jury chaired by last year’s winner, Jaione Camborda (the fourth director in a row to win the Golden Shell) has been more irregular. The special jury prize went to the last film to enter the competition, The Last Showgirl, by Gia Coppola, Francis’ eldest granddaughter. That a film that does not leave the traditional scheme of indie American has taken the considered second award, no matter how much it seems that Pamela Anderson is making the most of her last opportunity to get hooked on auteur cinema. Anderson gives life, as if she were her mirror, to Shelley, a 52-year-old dancer from Las Vegas who faces the closing of the show, a show halfway between cabaret and the simple eroticism of the eighties, in which he works. The jury has indicated in its justification that the trophy highlights the excellence of the work of its entire cast, which, indeed, is the best of the film, because alongside Anderson, there is, among other actresses, a supernatural Jamie Lee Curtis.
It is also strange, in what seems like a consensus decision, that two such different approaches to directing share the Silver Shell in their category. The Spaniard Pedro Martín-Calero has taken her away due to the terror transmitted through generations of women infected by the same evil that reflects The crying, and the Portuguese Laura Carreira with On Falling, which, produced by Ken Loach, talks about how immigrants (its protagonist is a Portuguese woman who gets by as best she can in Glasgow in a large warehouse of a digital sales platform) end up swallowed up by neo-capitalism. Curiously, both Martín-Calero and Carreira make their feature debut. When collecting his diploma, Martín-Calero remembered that in The crying They talk about sexist violence and “that it is everyone’s responsibility” to end it.
More accurate is the Silver Shell for best lead performance for Patricia López Arnaiz, for The sparkles. She plays Isabel, a woman who lives on the outskirts of a provincial city, and who speaks again with her ex-husband, Ramón (a heartbreaking Antonio de la Torre), when their daughter, who is studying outside of that city in where his parents live, warns his mother that his father’s death due to illness is imminent. As he has always done in his performances, López Arnaiz gives finesse and nuances, life and color, to his Isabel, who must stop and not turn her back on someone who does not ask for, but needs, her help. López Arnaiz held his nerve in his speech and thanked the entire team, especially its director, Pilar Palomero, “who also deserves to be up here.”
When autumn falls, a new installment of the very long filmography of the Frenchman François Ozon —Concha de Oro in 2012 with At home-, has received two awards: the one for best script, most deserved for the twists of a plot starring two elderly women who have lived a troubled past (they have been prostitutes) and whose children are emotionally complicating the end of their days, and that of secondary interpretation, for Pierre Lottin, one of those offspring. Lottin appeared in another of the films screened at Zinemaldia, specifically in the Perlak section, the tragicomedy All the way up, who took the public award. On stage Lottin was by far the funniest.
Within the ceremony, the fight of Argentine cinema so that its own government does not destroy its foundations had a brilliant spokesperson in Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, protagonist of The jockey, by Luis Ortega, who won in the Horizontes Latinos section. The same festival dedicated a moment of the gala to supporting their petition “against those who want to end their culture,” the organization stated. In the long list of awards, very few spectators in the Kursaal stalls realized that in the New Directors section, the mention went to the documentary The flamenco guitar of Yerai Cortés, by Antón Álvarez, the real name of who in music is known as C. Tangana.
The 72nd edition ends with the feeling that the festival is about to burst at its seams in terms of acts, screenings and events. Of course, in the official section there have been good films – with the exception of the cinematic debacle at the opening, Emmanuelle— although one flew above all in risk, ambition and cinema, and that one, Lonely afternoons, took the Golden Shell.
Winners of the 72nd San Sebastián Festival
Golden Shell: Lonely afternoons, by Albert Serra.
Special Jury Prize: The Last Showgirl, by Gia Coppola.
Silver Shell for the best address: ex aequo for Pedro Martín-Calero, for The crying, and Laura Carreira, for On Falling.
Silver Shell for best lead performance: Patricia López Arnaiz, for The sparkles.
Silver Shell for best supporting performance: Pierre Lottin, by When autumn falls.
Best script: François Ozon and Philippe Piazzo, for When autumn falls.
Best photography: Songri Piao, by Bound In Heaven.
New Directors: Bagger Drama, by Piet Baumgartner.
Latin horizons: The jockey, by Luis Ortega.
Zabaltegi – Tabakalera: April, by Dea Kulumbegashvili.
Audience Award: All the way up, by Emmanuel Courcol.
Youth Award: Turn Me On, by Michael Tyburski.
Fipresci Award: Bound In Heaven, by Xin Huo.
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