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

EUR -
AED 3.826681
AFN 70.961758
ALL 98.138602
AMD 405.652886
ANG 1.877182
AOA 951.190259
ARS 1045.720247
AUD 1.602814
AWG 1.877897
AZN 1.775245
BAM 1.955573
BBD 2.102956
BDT 124.465544
BGN 1.955573
BHD 0.392554
BIF 3076.642669
BMD 1.041829
BND 1.403837
BOB 7.197164
BRL 6.043693
BSD 1.041579
BTN 87.914489
BWP 14.229347
BYN 3.408604
BYR 20419.848375
BZD 2.099456
CAD 1.456529
CDF 2991.091432
CHF 0.930957
CLF 0.036923
CLP 1018.83097
CNY 7.54601
CNH 7.562783
COP 4573.368835
CRC 530.538382
CUC 1.041829
CUP 27.608468
CVE 110.252195
CZK 25.343745
DJF 185.478458
DKK 7.457729
DOP 62.772709
DZD 139.835759
EGP 51.726992
ERN 15.627435
ETB 127.508391
FJD 2.371151
FKP 0.822333
GBP 0.831435
GEL 2.855018
GGP 0.822333
GHS 16.456089
GIP 0.822333
GMD 73.970229
GNF 8977.957272
GTQ 8.040066
GYD 217.904692
HKD 8.109446
HNL 26.320943
HRK 7.431636
HTG 136.72412
HUF 411.522823
IDR 16610.452733
ILS 3.863061
IMP 0.822333
INR 87.968134
IQD 1364.44153
IRR 43834.955489
ISK 145.523076
JEP 0.822333
JMD 165.930728
JOD 0.738765
JPY 161.242873
KES 134.884334
KGS 90.122166
KHR 4193.512952
KMF 492.268155
KPW 937.645704
KRW 1463.259646
KWD 0.320727
KYD 0.867999
KZT 520.059599
LAK 22878.342838
LBP 93271.167197
LKR 303.144792
LRD 187.998165
LSL 18.795317
LTL 3.076251
LVL 0.630192
LYD 5.086409
MAD 10.478083
MDL 18.997794
MGA 4861.435378
MKD 61.522855
MMK 3383.819949
MNT 3540.134882
MOP 8.35093
MRU 41.443187
MUR 48.810083
MVR 16.10707
MWK 1806.090235
MXN 21.281613
MYR 4.654932
MZN 66.583684
NAD 18.795317
NGN 1767.675143
NIO 38.325549
NOK 11.531328
NPR 140.663663
NZD 1.78585
OMR 0.400943
PAB 1.041579
PEN 3.949541
PGK 4.193513
PHP 61.404399
PKR 289.239507
PLN 4.337676
PYG 8131.055634
QAR 3.798559
RON 4.978071
RSD 116.991412
RUB 108.671879
RWF 1421.834864
SAR 3.911473
SBD 8.734231
SCR 14.272055
SDG 626.663972
SEK 11.501974
SGD 1.402931
SHP 0.822333
SLE 23.68116
SLL 21846.638123
SOS 595.230868
SRD 36.978718
STD 21563.75683
SVC 9.113941
SYP 2617.626467
SZL 18.788818
THB 35.922648
TJS 11.092512
TMT 3.646401
TND 3.309016
TOP 2.440072
TRY 36.018972
TTD 7.074178
TWD 33.946439
TZS 2770.578216
UAH 43.089995
UGX 3848.553017
USD 1.041829
UYU 44.294855
UZS 13362.448044
VES 48.506662
VND 26482.251319
VUV 123.688032
WST 2.90836
XAF 655.880824
XAG 0.033274
XAU 0.000384
XCD 2.815595
XDR 0.792308
XOF 655.880824
XPF 119.331742
YER 260.379151
ZAR 18.862746
ZMK 9377.71492
ZMW 28.772658
ZWL 335.468513
  • SCS

    0.2300

    13.27

    +1.73%

  • RELX

    0.9900

    46.75

    +2.12%

  • GSK

    0.2600

    33.96

    +0.77%

  • AZN

    1.3700

    65.63

    +2.09%

  • RIO

    -0.2200

    62.35

    -0.35%

  • RBGPF

    59.2400

    59.24

    +100%

  • RYCEF

    -0.0100

    6.79

    -0.15%

  • NGG

    1.0296

    63.11

    +1.63%

  • CMSC

    0.0320

    24.672

    +0.13%

  • BTI

    0.4000

    37.38

    +1.07%

  • BCE

    0.0900

    26.77

    +0.34%

  • BCC

    3.4200

    143.78

    +2.38%

  • VOD

    0.1323

    8.73

    +1.52%

  • BP

    0.2000

    29.72

    +0.67%

  • CMSD

    0.0150

    24.46

    +0.06%

  • JRI

    -0.0200

    13.21

    -0.15%

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