Albert Serra's director of photography who has worked with Björk and Lav Diaz

GironaCinema is an art form created by a team, and although directors often get most of the spotlight, a good film requires a team of highly trained professionals all pulling in the same direction. Films by Albert Serra. Self-taught and with a profoundly artistic vision, Tort amazed audiences and critics with his spectacular work in the cinema. Pacification (2022) and, following this milestone, which earned him a César Award in France, have recently contacted artists of the stature of singer Björk and filmmaker Lav Diaz. With the former, he recorded the concert Cornucopia, which was shown in theaters last May and, with the second, he directed the photography and edited the film. Magellan, starring actor Gael García Bernal, premiered at Cannes this year.

During the summer Tort is in Latvia shooting Albert Serra's new film, Out of this world, scheduled for 2026, which deals with the historic rivalry between Russia and the United States, and features renowned American actors such as F. Murray Abraham and Riley Keough, who played Elvis Presley. With the locations already defined, the director of photography has been studying and testing the logic of light and colors in the Baltic country for weeks. "The weather is very changeable, it's often gray and cloudy, but then suddenly the sun comes out. The nights are very short and at dusk there's a kind of suspended blueish light that's very interesting," he comments.

Obviously, they couldn't film in Russia for geopolitical reasons, but Latvia offers a setting with many possibilities: "You can recognize the pro-Soviet Russian landscape paintings of the 19th century and we can get close to a verisimilitude with Russia, although any fiction has its own." Although the landscape of birch forests has nothing to do with the beaches of waves and palm trees of PacificationThere's a certain continuity in the aesthetic proposal. "Visually, I have my mannerisms: certain elements of colorimetry, saturation, and highlights are fairly constant, as is the pursuit of a vaporous image; but I'm exploring new things, which we'll apply during filming and also in post-production," he explains.

Philippine expedition with the master ofslow cinema

Before the latest film by the Banyolí filmmaker, Tort embarked on a high-seas expedition with Lav Diaz, master ofslow cinema, to command the image of Magalhães, A film co-produced by Andergraun Films, about the Portuguese explorer, shot from the perspective of colonized peoples. Like Serra, the Filipino director works with a small crew, but his approach to images is quite different. "Lav usually works with a single camera, but I convinced him to use two, given the complexity of the shoot. At first, he gave me specific instructions, but then he saw that I understood him, that I could decode his language, and he told me, 'Choose your angle»", Tort recalls. And he concludes: "Lav's style is very direct and straightforward. Everything happens according to plan, the actors memorize the script, and the scene is almost always resolved in the first take. This makes the film function as a succession of very fragile vignettes. It's a cinema of a single, calligraphic gesture. A perhaps more elaborate, less crude, less angular plasticity, and a more nuanced and sophisticated work in portraying the era."

Keyboardist of El Petit de Cal Eril recording with Björk

Before Diaz, Tort received a call from Icelandic singer Björk. Pacification and contacted me to tell me that he wanted to record a live concert and that he really liked the colors in the film, especially the "peach oranges" and the "lime greens"", says Tort. The job of the Vic director of photography was to direct and coordinate a team of professionals in a concert recorded in a single night in a large stadium in Lisbon. "I had to try to build a filming system with hybrid collaboration with a BBC camera team with a lot of experience in live events. Very complex production, more similar to that of a football match", he recalls. And, about Björk's proposal, he highlights: "It's not a live show "Anyway, the show has a cornucopia of colors, characters, curtains, musicians, and heart, with an operatic and theatrical staging that evokes science fiction. I wanted to refine everything that responded to my sensibilities and put my stamp on the way I treated colors."

In fact, Tort, despite his specialization in the world of images, also has a track record in the music sector, having been the keyboardist for El Petit de Cal Eril for many years. Since he has recently been involved in other film projects, he has not been able to fully involve himself in the return of Joan Pons' group, but he did participate in the recording of some tracks on the new album and remains connected to the band. His musical side made him a great fit with Björk: "It allowed me to understand many moments of the concert and give instructions for deciphering and conceptualizing the filming. Björk and I talked a lot about music during the preparation for Reykjavik, chatting and drinking wine. She's a very interesting person, and I like her because she pretty much does what she wants. This is reflected in the filming and editing," he concludes.