Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes

Gabriel Azorín’s feature debut unfolds amid the ruins of an ancient Roman bath in the Spanish countryside. The film follows two young men, António (Santiago Mateus) and Jota (António Gouveia), as they spend a night wandering the steam-shrouded complex. By dawn, they are forced to confront not only fragments of history but also the more vulnerable, unvarnished parts of themselves. On paper, it is the sort of elliptical set-up on which arthouse cinema can thrive. In practice, however, it proves more intriguing in concept than in execution.

Azorín is clearly preoccupied with parallels – between the tentative exchanges of the friends and their Roman soldier counterparts, Pompeii (Pavle Cemerikic) and Aurelius (Oussama Asfaraah), who appear as figures half-rooted in fantasy and half in history. They, too, are young and uncertain, burdened with worries about family and the ongoing war. At times, these echoes strike with force: fleeting conversations about death, delivered with the overconfident seriousness of youth while leaping across stones, or glimpses of soldiers deemed unfit to serve. The seamless continuity of the night is another subtle touch – the sky darkens almost imperceptibly, and morning arrives just as gently, underscoring the sense of time folding back on itself.

Yet the central relationship never fully resonates. A lengthy monologue in which António chastises Jota for failing to live up to his own aspirations is emblematic of the problem. Delivered in one stretch, the speech feels self-conscious and lands with little emotional weight. Jota’s half-hearted listening only highlights the hollowness of the moment, and the muted resolution that follows is anticlimactic.

Visually, too, the setting promises more than it delivers. Midnight baths, drifting steam, torchlit ruins – all suggest sensual mystery. But Azorín’s camera feels constrained. Compositions quickly grow repetitive, evoking the stasis of a filmed play or a student exercise rather than cinema alive with possibility. However technically demanding the shoot may have been, the imagery soon stagnates, its stillness sliding into monotony.

Even so, Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes is not without flashes of something richer. Azorín shows a sensitivity to history’s lingering presence and to the way young men try on philosophies as easily as they try on bravado. The film shines in these fleeting moments of promise, but in the end, Thebes feels only half-conquered.

Christina Yang

Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes does not have a release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Venice Film Festival coverage here.

For further information about the event, visit the Venice Film Festival website here.