Albert Serra’s Bullfighting Doc ‘Afternoons of Solitude’ Wins Golden Shell at San Sebastián, as Pamela Anderson and ‘The Last Showgirl’ Take Jury Prize

Sometimes, in a closely contested festival competition, it pays to be the one thing that isn’t like the others. A starkly powerful, observational study of contemporary bullfighting, Spanish auteur Albert Serra’s “Afternoons of Solitude” was the only documentary in the main competition at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival — and this evening won the Golden Shell for best film of the festival, beating some big-name narrative competition.

The award was presented by last year’s Golden Shell winner, Spanish filmmaker Jaione Camborda, heading a jury that also included directors Ulrich Seidl, Christos Nikou and Fran Kranz, producer Carole Scotta and Argentine journalist Leila Guerriero.

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Centred on star Peruvian matador Andrés Rey Roca, “Afternoons of Solitude” is candid in its depiction of the violence of the sport, and has already proven controversial on home turf, with Spain’s animal-rights party PACMA calling for the film to be withdrawn from the festival. But while Serra — the arthouse provocateur better known for his challenging fiction work, including “Pacifiction” and “The Death of Louis XIV” — resists overt commentary in “Afternoons in Solitude,” few could mistake it for an endorsement of a tradition it depicts with equal parts horror, absurdity and spectacle.

Variety’s review praised the film as “extraordinary,” and “a major work from a richly maturing filmmaker, of a piece with his recent fiction features in its use of languid repetition and sensory saturation to pull the audience into something approaching a discomfiting dream state.” The film has its international premiere next week at the New York Film Festival.

Clearly, Camborda’s jury was out to upend expectations. The penultimate award, the Special Jury Prize, is usually given to a filmmaker, but in this case was presented to an entire acting ensemble: the cast of Gia Coppola’s Las Vegas-set character study “The Last Showgirl,” led by Pamela Anderson in a poignant, career-reinventing performance as a veteran revue dancer seeking a new path in life when her long-running show closes.

The film’s awarded players also include Jamie Lee Curtis, Dave Bautista, Kiernan Shipka, Billie Lourd and Brenda Song. But it’s principally Anderson’s vehicle, as the erstwhile “Baywatch” pinup seemingly riffs on her own career setbacks and insecurities in the kind of dramatic role for which she was never previously considered. Few would have predicted the star ever receiving a major European festival prize: accepting the award onstage with Coppola, she limited her speech to a few brief, palpably moved thank-yous.

The jury’s official — and gender-neutral — acting awards for Best Leading Performance and Best Supporting Performance went respectively presented to Spanish star Patricia López Arnaiz, restrained and moving as a mother supporting her ex-husband through a terminal illness in Pilar Palomero’s “Glimmers,” and French comic actor Pierre Lottin as a rural ex-con who surprisingly redirects the narrative of François Ozon’s autumnal psychological drama “When Fall is Coming.” Ozon and co-writer Philippe Piazzo also won Best Screenplay for the subtly subversive, genre-shifting work, making it the only multiple prizewinner in the official selection.

Best Director was shared between two first-time feature filmmakers: Portuguese director Laura Carreira for “On Falling,” a wrenching, socially conscious portrait of an immigrant warehouse worker in Scotland, and Spaniard Pedro Martin-Calero for “The Wailing,” a stylish, conceptually nifty horror film with significant international crossover potential. Accepting her award, Carreira expressed her astonishment at winning the prize as a newcomer over such high-profile competitors as Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” Edward Berger’s “Conclave” and Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The End” — all of which went unrewarded by the jury. “I thought there’s no way in hell we’re going to get anything,” she said, before thanking the festival for its recognition of a film “about valuing people over profit.”

In the separate New Directors competition, limited to debut features, a jury headed by “Triangle of Sadness” producer Philippe Bober — and including Variety critic Jessica Kiang — handed the top prize to Swiss director Piet Baumgartner for “Bagger Drama,” a story of a family riven by tragedy and stifled by their inability to talk through their feelings. Baumgartner dedicated his award to “all the queer people out there who think they’re a little bit strange, but actually they’re just fine.”

Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili, a Golden Shell winner four years ago with her debut “Beginning,” won top honors in the festival’s Zabaltegi-Tabakalera competition — dedicated to avant-garde and experimental work — for her sophomore feature “April,” a hard-hitting abortion drama that took the Jury Prize at Venice earlier this month. Another Venice premiere, Argentine filmmaker Luis Ortega’s offbeat comedy “Kill the Jockey,” emerged victorious in the festival’s Latin Horizons competition.

The public-voted Audience Award went — by a significant margin, as evident in the polling results publicized throughout the festival — to the sentimental French heartwarmer “The Marching Band,” directed by Emmanuel Courcol and also starring Lottin, about long-lost brothers separated by class and circumstance, and united by a shared passion for music. An additional Audience Award for Best European Film (awarded even when the main Audience Award winner is European) went, perhaps a bit confusingly, to Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s Cannes-lauded domestic thriller “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” — a European co-production already submitted by Germany as their entry for the Best International Feature Oscar.

Preceding the screening of the festival’s Closing Film, the Florence Pugh-Andrew Garfield romance “We Live in Time,” the awards brought a pleasingly diverse, artistically-minded close to a festival that opened on a bum critical note with Audrey Diwan’s widely panned “Emmanuelle” remake — somewhat less surprisingly overlooked by the Competition jury.

Full list of winners below:

OFFICIAL SELECTION AWARDS

Golden Shell for Best Film: “Afternoons of Solitude,” Albert Serra

Special Jury Prize: The ensemble cast of “The Last Showgirl”

Silver Shell for Best Director: (ex aequo) “On Falling,” Laura Carreira; Pedro Martin-Calero, “The Wailing”

Silver Shell for Best Leading Performance: “Glimmers,” Patricia López Arnaiz

Silver Shell for Best Supporting Performance: “When Fall is Coming,” Pierre Lottin

Best Cinematography: “Bound in Heaven,” Piao Songri

Best Screenplay: “When Fall is Coming,” François Ozon, Philippe Piazzo

OTHER OFFICIAL AWARDS

New Directors Award: “Bagger Drama,” Piet Baumgartner

New Directors Award (Special Mention): “La guitarra flamenca de Yerai Cortés,” Antón Álvarez

Horizontes Latinos Award: “Kill the Jockey,” Luis Ortega

Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Award: “April,” Dea Kulumbegashvili

Zabaltegi-Tabakalera Award (Special Mention): “Collective Monologue,” Jessica Sarah Rinland

Audience Award for Best Film: “The Marching Band,” Emmanuel Courcol

Audience Award for Best European Film: “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Mohammad Rasoulof

Irizar Basque Film Award: “Chaplin: Spirit of the Tramp,” Carmen Chaplin

Irinzar Basque Film Award (Special Mention): “Replica,” Pello Gutiérrez Peñalba

Culinary Zinema Best Film Award: “Mugaritz. Sin pan ni postre,” Paco Plaza

Eusko Label First Prize: “Las Guardianas,” Borja De Agüero

Eusko Label Second Prize: “KM 0,” Jon Martija Leunda

RTVE Another Look Award: “All We Imagine As Light,” Payal Kapadia

RTVE Another Look Award (Special Mention): “On Falling,” Laura Carreira

Spanish Co-operation Award: “Sujo,” Astrid Rondero, Fernanda Valadez

PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED AWARDS

Nest the Mediapro Studio Award: “The Reign of Antoine,” José Luis Jiménez Gómez 

Euskadi Basque Country 2030 Agenda Award: “I Am Nevenka,” Iciar Bollain

Zinemaldia Startup Challenge Best Spanish Project: Dubme

Zinemaldia Startup Challenge Best Spanish Project (Special Mention): Current Anima

Zinemaldia Startup Challenge Best European Project: Sonic Alchemist

Zinemaldia Startup Challenge Special Mention for Entrepreneurship: Kaspar K1

WIP Latam Industry Award: “A Loose End,” Daniel Hendler

Egeda Platino Industria Award For The Best WIP Latam: “Cuerpo Celeste,” Nayra Ilic

WIP Europa Industry Award: “Blue Marks,” Sarah Miro Fischer

WIP Europa Award: “Blue Marks,” Sarah Miro Fischer

XIII Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum Best Project Award: “The Two Landscapes,” Francisco Lezama

DALE! Award: “The Two Landscapes,” Francisco Lezama

Artekino International Award: “Mar de Lava,” Mariana Saffon

Ikusmira Berriak Award: “Dear Bastiano,” Maria Elorza Deias

Casa Wabi-ESCINE Award: “Senda,” Miele Landa Eiguren

Music Library Award: “La noche de la infancia,” Xixi Sofía Ye Chen

Dogwoof Award: “Barrabas,” Daniel Martínez-Quintanilla

Epe-Ibaia-Elkargi Award: “Barrabas,” Daniel Martínez-Quintanilla

HONORARY AWARDS

Donostia Awards: Pedro Almodóvar, Javier Bardem, Cate Blanchett