Almodovar hits Venice film fest

(ANSA) - VENICE, SEP 3 - Pedro Almodovar hit the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.
    The cult Spanish director presented his new half-hour short The Human Voice, which is out of competition.
    It is based on the Jean Cocteau play of the same name.
    It has been adapted for the screen several times including an iconic version with Anna Magnani in the lead role in Roberto Rossellini's 'L'Amore'.
    Almodovar's lead is Tilda Swinton, who is getting a career Golden Lion at this year's 77th festival.
    The Venice festival is the world's oldest cinema fest.
    The acclaimed director told a Lido audience that going to a cinema was the antidote to COVID lockdown fever.
    "Before coming here I thought that COVID had forced us to stay at home, which we viewed at a certain point as a prison," said the director of All About My Mother.
    "How many serials, how many films have we seen (on streaming services) to fill the time, and how much are serials and films necessary and helpful?" But he said it was better to "leave the home and go to the cinema to share the adventure of a film in a projection room, being thrilled together with strangers".
    Almodóvar achieved international recognition for his black comedy-drama film Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and went on to more success with the dark romantic comedy film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), the melodrama High Heels (1991) and the romantic drama thriller Live Flesh (1997).
    His subsequent two films won an Academy Award each: All About My Mother (1999) received the award for Best Foreign Language Film while Talk to Her (2002) earned him the award for Best Original Screenplay.
    Almodóvar followed this with the drama Volver (2006), the romantic thriller Broken Embraces (2009), the psychological thriller The Skin I Live In (2011) and the dramas Julieta (2016) and Pain and Glory (2019), all of which were in competition for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. (ANSA).