Dubai Telegraph - Pedro Almodovar: chronicler of modern Spain crowned in Venice

EUR -
AED 3.938479
AFN 73.284283
ALL 98.19234
AMD 417.267449
ANG 1.943348
AOA 978.447316
ARS 1071.53141
AUD 1.629089
AWG 1.930079
AZN 1.82711
BAM 1.955647
BBD 2.17713
BDT 128.849948
BGN 1.9562
BHD 0.406468
BIF 3183.551653
BMD 1.072266
BND 1.425189
BOB 7.467417
BRL 6.152562
BSD 1.078316
BTN 90.972903
BWP 14.300884
BYN 3.528725
BYR 21016.42052
BZD 2.17343
CAD 1.49386
CDF 3073.115756
CHF 0.939162
CLF 0.03726
CLP 1028.119797
CNY 7.698019
CNH 7.63378
COP 4640.937963
CRC 551.556973
CUC 1.072266
CUP 28.415058
CVE 110.256399
CZK 25.259812
DJF 192.015021
DKK 7.459869
DOP 64.934934
DZD 142.958848
EGP 52.835878
ERN 16.083995
ETB 133.503285
FJD 2.399951
FKP 0.820465
GBP 0.830088
GEL 2.916983
GGP 0.820465
GHS 17.683621
GIP 0.820465
GMD 76.671173
GNF 9295.27488
GTQ 8.33535
GYD 225.592402
HKD 8.336174
HNL 27.205878
HRK 7.386875
HTG 141.888931
HUF 407.236454
IDR 16786.168917
ILS 4.020796
IMP 0.820465
INR 90.481213
IQD 1412.489812
IRR 45134.375558
ISK 148.766647
JEP 0.820465
JMD 171.076654
JOD 0.760348
JPY 163.686863
KES 139.08915
KGS 92.433433
KHR 4378.658423
KMF 493.644665
KPW 965.039476
KRW 1499.246878
KWD 0.328832
KYD 0.89853
KZT 530.808592
LAK 23665.153893
LBP 96559.167469
LKR 315.465391
LRD 204.33406
LSL 18.869628
LTL 3.166124
LVL 0.648604
LYD 5.232592
MAD 10.648369
MDL 19.338491
MGA 4988.610841
MKD 61.5252
MMK 3482.679288
MNT 3643.561097
MOP 8.633826
MRU 42.957649
MUR 49.75717
MVR 16.566921
MWK 1869.754141
MXN 21.634265
MYR 4.699212
MZN 68.521819
NAD 18.869628
NGN 1788.626462
NIO 39.676905
NOK 11.794827
NPR 145.556645
NZD 1.797446
OMR 0.412628
PAB 1.078316
PEN 4.044584
PGK 4.328662
PHP 62.679371
PKR 299.424042
PLN 4.325898
PYG 8431.342275
QAR 3.931893
RON 4.977143
RSD 116.980874
RUB 104.99181
RWF 1478.084695
SAR 4.02742
SBD 8.943509
SCR 14.390377
SDG 644.972153
SEK 11.594849
SGD 1.4214
SHP 0.820465
SLE 24.501684
SLL 22484.885861
SOS 616.251927
SRD 37.497551
STD 22193.748611
SVC 9.435264
SYP 2694.101668
SZL 18.864528
THB 36.687634
TJS 11.462006
TMT 3.763655
TND 3.347839
TOP 2.511359
TRY 36.822021
TTD 7.327428
TWD 34.580984
TZS 2878.975413
UAH 44.514627
UGX 3946.692121
USD 1.072266
UYU 45.046486
UZS 13787.924411
VEF 3884341.194834
VES 47.874003
VND 27101.532073
VUV 127.301648
WST 3.003615
XAF 655.905833
XAG 0.031788
XAU 0.000394
XCD 2.897854
XDR 0.808437
XOF 655.905833
XPF 119.331742
YER 267.878982
ZAR 19.79817
ZMK 9651.687743
ZMW 29.35571
ZWL 345.269328
  • JRI

    0.1600

    13.53

    +1.18%

  • BCC

    1.4700

    142.32

    +1.03%

  • BCE

    0.3000

    28.37

    +1.06%

  • GSK

    -0.3700

    36.29

    -1.02%

  • RBGPF

    61.4000

    61.4

    +100%

  • CMSD

    0.2350

    25.125

    +0.94%

  • RIO

    -3.0400

    64.43

    -4.72%

  • SCS

    0.0600

    13.14

    +0.46%

  • CMSC

    0.1600

    24.84

    +0.64%

  • BTI

    -0.0100

    35.39

    -0.03%

  • RELX

    0.3200

    47.98

    +0.67%

  • VOD

    -0.0100

    9.31

    -0.11%

  • RYCEF

    0.0100

    7.15

    +0.14%

  • BP

    -0.8800

    28.93

    -3.04%

  • NGG

    -0.3600

    63.94

    -0.56%

  • AZN

    -0.2000

    64.49

    -0.31%

Pedro Almodovar: chronicler of modern Spain crowned in Venice
Pedro Almodovar: chronicler of modern Spain crowned in Venice / Photo: Alberto PIZZOLI - AFP

Pedro Almodovar: chronicler of modern Spain crowned in Venice

Born during the dark days of dictatorship, Pedro Almodovar -- awarded the top prize in Venice Saturday -- chronicled in vivid colour the reopening of Spanish society, and has come to embody his country's cinema.

Text size:

Ironically it was the director's first feature-length film in English, "The Room Next Door", that won him the Golden Lion, even if he had received a career award from Venice in 2019.

"The Room Next Door" sees regular Almodovar collaborator Tilda Swinton as a war correspondent suffering from terminal cancer, with Julianne Moore as her friend who stays with her in the final days.

"It is my first movie in English but the spirit is Spanish," Almodovar said after receiving the award, where he made an appeal for dying with dignity to be a "fundamental right".

Long synonymous with subversive stories that mixed humour, transgression and lots of drugs and sex, Almodovar's works are increasingly tormented by physical decline and the fear of death.

To explain this new seriousness, the 74-year-old often evokes his life as an ageing man, living increasingly as a recluse with his cat.

Almodovar burst onto the international scene with his 1988 Oscar-nominated "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", a dark kitschy comedy about a woman who had just been dumped by her lover and whose apartment becomes the scene of hostage situations and accidental overdoses.

Once asked about the "masochism, homosexuality, masturbation, drugs, porn and attacks against religion" that seemed to characterise his films, he replied: "All of these themes that are considered taboo belong to my life.

"I don't consider them to be prohibited or scandalous," the director added.

But for more than a decade, Almodovar has been embracing a more poignant tone in his work.

His "Pain and Glory" from 2019 featured Antonio Banderas playing an ailing director that the filmmaker has acknowledged was modelled on himself.

- Mother as muse -

One of the leaders of the "Movida", the explosion of creativity that followed the death of longtime Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, Almodovar is openly gay.

He soon became a symbol and chronicler of a modern and tolerant Spain that he also helped create.

Born in 1949 in the arid region of La Mancha in the centre of Spain, he rarely talks about his father, who died in 1980.

But he grew up in the company of women and his mother has been a key reference throughout his life, with maternity a recurring theme of his movies, particularly in his 1999 masterpiece, "All About My Mother".

"My passion for colour is a response to my mother who spent so many years in mourning and blackness that goes against nature," he once said.

His debut feature film, the 1980 camp comedy "Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom", captured the newfound cultural and sexual freedom of the time.

He was one of the first directors to include transgender characters in his movies, including in "All About My Mother", which won the Oscar for best foreign language film.

He won a second Oscar for best original screenplay for his 2002 film "Talk To Her".

I.Mansoor--DT