San Sebastian (Spain), Aug 14 (EFE).- Pedro Almodóvar, the most international director, screenwriter and producer of Spanish cinema, will receive one of the Donostia Awards at the 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival, which will be held from September 20 to 28.
The director will be honoured on Thursday 26th, just after his 75th birthday and before the screening of his latest film, ‘The Room Next Door’, starring Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, which is his first feature film shot in English and will compete for the Golden Lion in Venice.
The festival will thus recognise “the honouree’s extraordinary contribution to the world of cinema” at an event in which Swinton will present him with the award on stage, the event announced on Wednesday.
“In addition to his artistic talent and recognizable visual style (…), Pedro Almodóvar’s films stand out for the writing of female characters, the acting direction, the audacity in the approach to topics such as the LGTBIQ+ universe, religion, sex, addictions or historical memory,” underlines the source, who also points out “his political commitment”, with positions against war conflicts or the speeches of the extreme right.
He points out that Almodóvar’s career, with almost thirty feature films, is backed by more than 200 nominations and more than 170 awards, including two Oscars, two Golden Globes, seven European Film Academy Awards, five Baftas, four Cesars, five Goyas and two David di Donatellos.
Pedro Almodóvar has received awards at the Cannes (France), Berlin (Germany), Venice (Italy) and San Sebastián (Spain) film festivals, and has been honoured at MoMA, the museum of contemporary art in New York.
The author of ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ and ‘All About My Mother’ has also received awards such as the Jean Renoir Prize from the Writers Guild of America, was chosen to give the prestigious David Lean speech at the Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) in London, and was named an honorary doctor at Harvard and Oxford, the Spanish festival recalls.
He has also received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts from the United States, the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts from Spain, the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts also in Spain, and the Order of Knight of the French Legion of Honor, among other awards.
She first attended the San Sebastian Film Festival in 1980 with her first film, ‘Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like No Other’, in the New Directors section.
His next film, Labyrinth of Passions (1982), competed for the Golden Shell. In 1995, Almodóvar returned to the Official Section with The Flower of My Secret, which was screened out of competition. That same year, the retrospective The Bazaar of Surprises featured his short film Trailer for Lovers of the Forbidden (1985).
From then on, many of his films were part of the San Sebastian programme after their appearance at festivals such as Cannes and Venice.
This is the second Donostia Award announced by the competition for its new edition, after that of Australian actress Cate Blanchett, who is also the star of this year’s official poster.
At the opening gala of this new edition, the Spanish actor Javier Bardem will be in San Sebastian to receive this honorary distinction, which was awarded to him in 2023 and which he could not collect due to the Hollywood actors’ strike. EFE
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2024-08-15 06:35:29
