Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes, Gabriel Azorín’s debut feature, offers a cinematic experience that transcends the simple act of storytelling to situate itself in a space where time dissolves and the most intimate emotions take on an unexpected prominence. Against the traditional vision of History, the one told to us as a succession of great deeds by great men, this work chooses to focus on what rarely finds a place in the books: anonymous bodies, the bonds that sustain marches and battles, the shared silences that, though they do not alter the course of empires, reveal much about what it means to be human. Azorín weaves a delicate bridge between two groups of young men separated by two thousand years, yet united by the same doubts and desires. The Portuguese boys crossing the border to visit a Roman site are reflected in those soldiers who, awaiting their departure to distant lands, find in the thermal baths a place to confess themselves. This superimposition of times is not presented as an artifice, but as a reminder that intimacy, friendship, and vulnerability do not belong to any particular era. The seemingly banal conversations of today’s youths, about video games, studies, and frustrated dreams, acquire deep resonance when juxtaposed with the confidences of legionaries who fear war, miss their families, or do not know how to face the command to obey. In both cases, what emerges is a male voice stripped of masks, a voice rarely heard on screen with such candor. By choosing this angle, the film allows the viewer not only to observe the characters but to see themselves reflected in them, as if the waters in which they bathe were also a mirror where each one can recognize their own insecurities and affections.

What is most fascinating about the film is that this vulnerability is not presented as weakness but as a form of resistance. In a world where masculinity is often represented through strength, violence, or power, Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes opens up a space of tenderness and confession where the simple act of speaking becomes a revolutionary gesture. Azorín ensures that the camera accompanies patiently, allowing words to fall slowly, as if they were stones thrown into a pond, and each silence weighs as heavily as what is said. The experience resembles a poem stretched over time: bodies free of artifice, the advancing night, fragility exposed, friendship strained by the fear of losing the other. Thus, the film does not merely present an intimate episode, but questions the very idea of which stories deserve to be told. Why have we grown accustomed to remembering only the generals and not the soldiers who accompanied them? Why are stories of friendship and confession between men relegated to the anecdotal, as if they were not as universal and transcendent as the fall of a city? In this sense, Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes is also a vindication: that of the sincere word between friends as an act of historical dignity. The thermal bath, the place where conversations from yesterday and today unfold, becomes a sanctuary that suspends war, obligations, and the passing of time. There, the young men allow themselves to be who they are, to open up, to confess fears and desires, and it is in that honesty that the film finds its greatest power. The final impression is that of having witnessed a rite, not so much cinematic as human, in which what is small and intimate is celebrated, the things rarely remembered yet forming the true fabric of life. Azorín invites us to look closely, to let ourselves be carried along by a slow rhythm that demands patience but rewards with unusual depth. By the end, what remains is not the sensation of having watched a historical account or a conventional plot, but the certainty of having heard voices that, though separated by centuries, speak of the same concerns that still haunt us today: the fear of loneliness, the need for friendship, the certainty that vulnerability is also a form of strength. That is the film’s most valuable conquest: to show us that, in the end, those who do not make History also sustain it, even if only in the intimacy of a bath, under the stars, as the night advances and reminds us that time can dissolve when someone decides to speak from the heart.