Feeling It

The documentary watches Joaquín Sabina offstage rather than on: on the tour bus, at home, in the days after hospital, in the stretches when he cannot write. Without the bowler hat. The film is not interested in being a concert film. It is interested in what ageing does to a man of the stage: Sabina wants to keep touring and his body and voice disagree. The film does not resolve the contradiction, it only records it. The form is loose and everyday: a small camera, long silences, unfinished sentences. The passages touring with Joan Manuel Serrat are its most alive. It was shot over thirteen years. Fernando León de Aranoa is Sabina's friend and carries the camera with that closeness; given how private Sabina is, that access is the film's real value. It screened at the San Sebastián festival and opened in Spain on 17 November 2022. Who it is for: people who know Sabina and like portraits of musicians. Who it is not for: anyone unfamiliar with the singer. The film introduces nothing, assumes you know who he is, and passes over a great many Spanish cultural references without explanation.