Reality and Fiction in “Soldados de Salamina”: Autofictional Mechanisms and Hybridization of Genres in the Film Adaptation.

Abstract

Since the emergence of the neologism “autofiction” by the author Serge Doubrovsky in the 70s, the critical study of the works named under this term has been on the rise. Most of these studies have been carried out in books belonging to literature; the studies carried out in the field of cinema do not abound in the same way. An excellent method to explore the autofictional device in the audiovisual medium could lie in the film adaptation. Soldados de Salamina (2001), considered one of the paradigmatic works of autofiction in Spanish, was adapted by David Trueba to the big screen in 2003. The director had to transpose some of these hybrids' characteristics between truth and invention, initially conceived in the literary sphere. For example: the question of nominal identity or the statute of fiction implied by the autofictional genre. Through adaptation, it is possible to verify these mechanisms transferred from the literary to the filmic medium and check whether these precepts are still in force. Furthermore, this incursion into the plane of reality that autofiction entails supposes a fluctuation in the film genre, within the cinematographic field, with the documentary being the primary genre in the introduction of real events. In this research, I propose exploring these filmic devices used to interweave reality and fiction, thus helping define autofiction in film studies.