23/04/2013 - An emotional Spanish documentary, filmed in 3D, will open the out of competition Malaga Premiere section, bringing the general public and the press to the edge of their seats

Every year in July, televisions from around the world show the powerful images from one of the most famous Spanish celebrations: the celebration of San Firmino in Pamplona (Navarra). The secular tradition once attracted Ernest Hemingway.

Encierro, a documentary directed by Dutch Olivier Van der Zee, produced by D4D Ingeniería Visual and REC Grabaketa Estudioa and presented in the out of competition Malaga Premiere section of the Spanish film festival in Malaga, takes us into the world of the most brutal race in the world with such realism, emotion and sense of theatre that it is impossible to not feel like one of the three thousands people running in front of the bulls, risking death.

The third film (after La chanson de Roland, in 2011, and El último magnate, in 2012) by the Dutch director, now a resident in Spain, will be coming out in cinemas the last week of June. During the eighty minutes of its unfolding, five men, dependent on the “heavy drug” that is risking your life in front of 600kg monsters bred to kill, are interviewed.

Despite being wounded on various occasions (one of them has lost his 27 year-old son), they cannot do without the thrill, the excitement and the fear they live through in Pamplona. Some of them even cross oceans in order to take part in this ritual which brings them to their limits. Indeed, with its tremendous images which illustrate the interviewees’ accounts, Encierro gives its audience a taste of what those few minutes in from of the bulls are like. They become the symbol of a passion and a way of life, with a hint of heroism. Madness and violence, camaraderie, panic and tragedy rub shoulders in this 3D documentary with epic tones, which, in those few metres of race, manages to transform itself into an action movie.  

With a budget of €1 million and filming taking place over four years, Encierro will appeal to international audiences with its foreigners addicted to adrenaline. For most of the films’ viewers, this stereoscopic documentary will be the closest point they will ever come to a bull.

(Translated from Spanish)