SanSebastian

 The film Afternoons of Solitude by Albert Serra has won the 2024 Feroz Zinemaldia Award.

The award was received at the Kursaal in San Sebastián by the film’s director himself and its producers, Pedro Palacios and Luis Ferrón. This award recognizes the best film in competition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, as decided by the members of the Association of Cinematographic Informers of Spain (AICE).

Afternoons of Solitude is an intimate and sublime portrayal of the beauty and primitivism of bullfighting,” reflects AICE President María Guerra. “Albert Serra places the camera in an unprecedented space, with merciless close-ups of the bullfighter’s dreadful tension and the bull’s defeat. It is a complex and visually miraculous documentary that legitimizes the beauty of bullfighting while questioning the sadistic cruelty towards animals. It is a total work of art without simple answers.”

Albert Serra already won the Feroz Special Award in 2017 for The Death of Louis XIV and was a candidate for the Feroz Arrebato Fiction Award in 2023 for Pacifiction.

The Association of Cinematographic Informers of Spain (AICE) is a diverse group of over 250 journalists and critics dedicated to covering cinema on television, radio, print, and the internet across the country. Since 2014, they have presented the FEROZ® AWARDS to highlight the best of the year’s Spanish audiovisual production. In addition to the annual awards, the association grants the Feroz Zinemaldia Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Feroz Puerta Oscura Award at the Málaga Festival, and the Feroz Cinema Jove Award for the best short film at the festival of the same name.