Albert Serra’s Bullfighting Doc ‘Afternoons of Solitude’ Wins San Sebastian’s Golden Shell

The 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival’s Golden Shell for best film has gone to Albert Serra’s Afternoons of Solitude , a documentary on bullfighting, edging out strong competition from narrative features by Joshua Oppenheimer, Edward Berger and Mike Leigh.

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The Spanish director’s film focuses on Peruvian-Spanish bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey. While noting that the doc’s graphic cruelty makes it a harrowing watch, The Hollywood Reporter ‘s chief film critic David Rooney in his review called it “transfixing … a unique study of discipline, bravado, laser-focus and showmanship.” It beat out Leigh’s Hard Truths and Berger’s Conclave , as well as Oppenheimer’s dystopian musical The End .

Elsewhere, Pamela Anderson and the cast of Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl took home the Special Jury Prize for best ensemble cast. THR ‘s review of the film said: “Even if The Last Showgirl feels slender overall, more consistently attentive to aesthetics and atmosphere than psychological profundity, there’s moving empathy in its portrait of [Las Vegas dancer] Shelly and women like her, their sense of self crumbling as they become cruelly devalued.”

The Silver Shell for best director went to Laura Carreira for On Falling , her film about a Portuguese worker in a Scottish warehouse navigating loneliness and alienation in an algorithm-driven gig economy, and to Pedro Martin-Calero for The Wailing , which focuses on a group of young people who inadvertently resurrect an invisible evil.

Patricia López Arnaiz won the Silver Shell for best leading performance in Glimmers and Pierre Lottin earned the equivalent prize for best supporting performance in When Fall is Coming .

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Among the other awards were best screenplay for François Ozon, Philippe Piazzo, When Fall is Coming , and the New Directors Award for Piet Baumgartner’s Bagger Drama . The Horizontes Latinos Award was given to Luis Ortega’s Kill the Jockey . Best cinematography was awarded to Piao Songri for Bound in Heaven .

The festival ran this year from Sept. 20-28, wrapping up with Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh’s We Live in Time . Honorary awards went to Cate Blanchett , Javier Bardem and Pedro Almodovar at the town’s Kursaal Theater.

See THR ‘s full San Sebastian coverage here .

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