A year of cinema, brought together: to celebrate the new year, we present a selection of films that shaped and coloured the film landscape of 2025 from January 15 to 25.
The Peruvian Andrés Roca Rey is considered one of the last great icons of bullfighting. Together with his entourage, he travels from arena to arena, through a world where life and death constantly collide — surrounded by blood, bravado, big balls, and shimmering embroidery. As the camera follows him up close, and even closer to the death and decadence that surround him, the hypnotic images draw us toward the boundary between beauty and cruelty. As Roca Rey performs his daring dance with death, the question arises: can something so violent also be beautiful?
In Tardes de Soledad, director Albert Serra offers a penetrating look into the world of tauromachy — a tradition that is both celebrated and reviled. With the camera pressed tightly against the matador’s skin, Serra reveals not only a physical struggle, but also a masculine world in which loneliness and vulnerability are hidden beneath blood-soaked costumes. Without passing judgment, yet with impeccable cinematic style, Serra confronts the viewer with their own moral limits in the struggle between human and animal, art and barbarism. The result is a film that is at once intense and intimate, brutal and mesmerizing, confrontational and poetic. Tardes de Soledad was awarded the Concha de Oro at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.