“Great works are written by drunks, drug addicts, and brawlers.” “I’ve always set out to grow old with dignity, and I think I understand that.” “Toxic love yields some great songs.” “It shouldn’t be the hour before the concert.” these are quotes that feel like a mosaic of voices—one long conversation between the filmmaker Fernando Leon de Aranoa and the musician Joaquín Sabina. The documentary traces thirteen years, moving as a shadow over the other, from 2009 when Sabina traveled to Rota with poet Benjamín Prado to write the album Vinagre y rosa.
The film isn’t a straightforward chronology; it stitches together moments across time in a sequence of leaps. “We soon discovered that imposing a traditional narrative wouldn’t make sense,” says the Madrid director at San Sebastián, where the film appeared out of competition this weekend. “The script itself was the absence of a script. There is always something happening around Joaquín, and the point was to embrace that glorious chaos.”
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Sabina’s behind-the-scenes journey begins with the Wizink Center concert in February 2020, just before a fall that led to emergency surgery and a long period away from the public eye. “Damn Fernandito, don’t make fun of me, you aren’t going to start the movie with the mess I gave myself, are you?” the artist quips in an early scene. The journey then sweeps to Mexico City, to Úbeda in his homeland, to the imposing Plaza de Las Ventas, and finally to Aguascalientes, where José Tomás narrowly escaped a fatal goring. The reactions on screen reveal pain, fear, and raw humanity.
tangos and novels
Along the route, the singer reflects on a career defined by family, love, and fans; she imagines a continent of music carved out by joy and struggle. He notes that José Alfredo Pérez is devoted to rustic life and suggests that many of his songs echo tango—“tango carries everything I love: the suburbs, the bold, knives, and the maddening truth.” Sabina even recalls a youthful plan to become a countryside high school teacher who would spend weekends drafting a novel that few would read but scholars would praise. Yet the guitar interrupts and redirects the tale.
Sabina grows emotional when visiting Úbeda, reading aloud some of her father’s verses. She recalls a painful memory: “My clouds include the moment when I began playing in big venues, while my father battled dementia and my mother was gravely ill. They died suddenly. They could not enjoy the boy’s success, and they would have loved it.”
“One aim of this film is to show the icon as a person, with nuance.” says the director, known for Mondays and The Good Boss. The focus shifts from perfection to vulnerability, from certainty to doubt, capturing a voice that can question itself and still command audiences. Sabina is portrayed as a paradox—an anarchist and a liberal, an atheist who observes Holy Week, a livestock enthusiast who loves the festival of bulls. For decades the public has followed her, and the tension between performance and fear remains a constant stress test. “It’s astonishing that this could happen in a forty-year arc,” she remarks, emerging from a moment of pre-performance nerves and acknowledging how admiration can feel both divine and doubtful.
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Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll are not merely clichés here; they are the texture of an era. The documentary delves into Sabina’s relentless honesty—drunk, exposed, and reflective. She recalls writing songs during sleepless stretches and notes that her life was built on a fierce mix of passion and excess that endured into her fifties. When happiness wavered, she released it and carried on. The arc of these memories becomes a testament to a career that has weathered storms and celebrated triumphs.
After a stroke in 2001 and a later partnership with Jimena, Sabina found faith that fueled health while challenging her creative stamina. Now at seventy-three, she holds many plans and a catalogue that still resonates with new generations. The documentary, in effect, stands as a tribute to Sabina’s most beloved songs and a preview of what might come next. It acknowledges the impossibility of simply improving past work, while candidly acknowledging the sadness that can accompany enduring fame.