Albert Serra never leaves one indifferent. Neither with his cinema, nor with his interviews. There is something authentic about him, something increasingly difficult to find in an industry where everything is done with squares and squares. Where an algorithm says what works and what doesn’t, or where you have to introduce a twist so that the viewer doesn’t leave. Serra takes these standards, those of the market, turns them into balls and throws them in the trash to continue making free cinema, going against the grain, which challenges the viewer.
Maybe that’s why the Golden Shell that the Catalan filmmaker won for everyone was so good. Lonely afternoons, the documentary on bullfighting which was the event of the festival. A few minutes after winning the award, Serra spoke to the press and showed once again that he is a rare bird in Spanish cinema. The first thing he said, after sitting down and ordering a glass of water, was that he never thought about whether he was going to like the movie or not. “If I tell the truth, people don’t believe it, but I didn’t care at all whether they liked it or not. I don’t think about it. We had enough problems to finish it on time and make it look good,” he began by saying.
In one of her legendary phrases when promoting her previous films, she defined herself as the Mother Teresa of Spanish cinema, because she gave a lot and received nothing in return. He smiles when reminded. “Now I have received a little more. Otherwise, he would already be a saint. They would take me to heaven. At that time it was true, but now I can’t say it anymore,” he admitted.
The unanimous critical response also made him think: what if he tamed himself a little? “I thought about it a bit. Not much. I guess from what my friends told me, compared to the other films, it was still the most daring. Let’s wait for the next one. About Russia. This one promises,” he admits and talks about his next film, which will be shot this summer and which, according to the American media, will have Kristen Stewart as the protagonist.
Bullfighting and anti-bullfighting. Everyone has praised the film, but Serra prefers not to evaluate what some have seen. He believes that the success of the film lies in its “honesty”. “He doesn’t stop at anything. In the same way that it shows intimacy, there are other shots that show another reality of violence. In this balance, I believe people can find the world it represents. That’s why it’s a documentary,” he adds.
The price itself doesn’t matter to him. “It’s not something that appeals to me. I don’t mind not winning. The awards don’t affect you, it’s the movie that matters. Obviously it helps finance upcoming films, for that it helps, but otherwise it neither helps nor harms. Honestly, this might sound strange, but I’ve honestly never met anyone in this acting world who cares less about success than I do. “I do not let myself be guided by these parameters,” he stressed.
If you have this privileged access, you cannot do anything wrong, not even the slightest wrong. There will always be self-awareness, but it should be as minimal as possible.
Albert Serra
— Director
He wants the team showing the film and the bullfighter who plays in it, Andrés Roca Rey, to “watch it calmly.” “We showed them a montage at the beginning, but he’s on something else, he’s got his own problems, like bullfighting, which is hard enough and it’s in the middle of the season. The film is an amplification of reality, and seeing yourself is also difficult to assimilate,” he said on the question of whether those he plays had already seen the film with a documentary with which he hopes that “the camera reveals something”. “If you have this access, you can’t do anything wrong, not even the slightest wrong. There will always be self-consciousness, but it should be as minimal as possible,” he said.
In his speech on the occasion of winning the Golden Shell, he underlined the importance of daring cinema to tackle thorny subjects such as bullfighting. He especially spoke of “formal audacity”, what he considers to be his “obsession”. “Doing things you don’t see, creating new atmospheres, that’s what I’ve always done.”
What he would not be interested in representing in a documentary is another world like that of football: “It doesn’t interest me because it has something more vulgar. It doesn’t matter much either because the same values are not claimed and it’s more of a media affair. At the start, it is already very exposed. This does not mean that another director more interested and intelligent than me can do it,” he concluded.
And the future of the bulls? Well, Serra responded, being Serra: “I’m not a fortune teller. But then he added more calmly: “like everything, it evolves, and society evolves in a certain way and sometimes things change too.”
