Albert Serra

Born in Banyoles in 1975, Albert Serra is a Catalan artist and director. A graduate in Spanish philology and literary theory, he gained international recognition with his first feature film, “Honor de cavallera“, a free adaptation of Don Quixote selected for the Directors’ Fortnight in 2006.



He works with friends, non-professional actors from his village, wanting to keep a holiday atmosphere during filming. Albert Serra has three rules that he imposes on his team: never answer the director who speaks to the actors during takes, never stop acting, never look at the director.



For his second film in 2008, “Le chant des oiseaux“, Serra was inspired by the traditional Catalan Christmas song “El cant dels ocells” and reunited with the same troupe to tell the story of the journey of the Three Wise Men guided by the shepherd’s star in search of the baby Jesus.



In 2013, he was given carte blanche by the Centre Pompidou in Paris as part of a correspondence with Argentinian filmmaker Lisandro Alonso. The same year, “Histoire de ma mort“, inspired by Casanova’s Memoirs, won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Festival. “La Mort de Louis XIV“, with Jean-Pierre Léaud in the role of the Sun King, was presented in the Official Selection at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.



In 2019, his film Liberté explores a night of libertinism in a small wood, during the French Revolution. The film received the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in the “un certain regard” section.



“Pacifiction” is his first film set in our time. Serra’s filming method is pushed to its paroxysm, in long improvisation scenes guided by earpieces by the director. The film is presented in the official selection at Cannes and receives the César for Best Actor (Benoît Magimel) and Best Cinematography (Artur Tort).