Tag Archives: Gerard Depardieu

Almodóvar to Serve as Jury President at This Year’s Cannes Film Festival

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Pedro Almodóvar is taking a special role at this year’s Cannes Film Festival…

The 67-year-old Spanish film director, screenwriter, producer has been named the next President of the Jury for the 70th edition of the festival in May.

Pedro Almodovar

“I am very happy to be able to celebrate Cannes Film Festival[‘s] 70th anniversary from such a privileged position,” said Almodóvar in a statement. “I am grateful, honoured and bit overwhelmed. I am aware of the responsibility that entails being the president of the jury and I hope to be up to the job. I can only tell that I’ll devote myself, body and soul to this task, that it is both a privilege and a pleasure.”

Almodóvar has a film career that spans across 35 years and his 20 films range from From Pepi, Luci, Born to La Mancha to last year’s Julieta. 

He’s worked with a range of actors including Penélope Cruz, Marisa Paredes, Antonio Banderas, Rossy de Palma, Javier Bardem, Javier Cámara, Carmen Maura and Victoria Abril.

Five of his films – All About My Mother, Volver, Broken Embraces, The Skin I Live In and Julieta – have been selected In Competition in Cannes. Bad Education opened the fest in 2004 while the director himself featured on the poster of the 60th festival.

“For its 70th edition, the Festival de Cannes is delighted to welcome a unique and hugely popular artist,” said the President of the Festival, Pierre Lescure and Delegate-General Thierry Frémaux. “A long and loyal friendship binds Pedor Almodóvar to the festival, where he was member of the jury under the presidency of Gérard Depardieu.”

The Cannes Film Festival runs May 17-28.

Almodovar Receives France’s Prix Lumiere for His Lifetime Filmmaking Achievements

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Pedro Almodóvar is beloved in France… And he has the prize to prove it!

The 65-year-old Spanish filmmaker has received the country’s Prix Lumiere for his lifetime filmmaking career.

Pedro Almodovar

Almodóvar was overcome by emotion during the tribute ceremony over the weekend, which was attended by members of the French film industry, as well as some of the actresses closest to him like Marisa Paredes, Rossy de Palma and Elena Anaya.

The ceremony ended with the 3,000 attendees packed into the Lyon Congress Center showing their devotion to the director, and at one point singing and dancing to “Resistire” by the Duo Dinamico.

Almodóvar closed the night’s moving festivities, which went on for more than two and a half hours, with a speech that, he said, he had prepared as if it were for a Nobel Prize and which he dedicated entirely to his mother.

Almodóvar, known for such films as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother and Talk to Her, said that his use of “explosive and saturated” colors is his act of revenge for the more than 30 years his mother spent in the “imposed” black of mourning.

Among the film icons who came to honor him were Isabella Rossellini, Paolo Sorrentino, Berenice Bejo and Keanu Reeves.

French actress Juliette Binoche presented him with the prize while shouting “Merci!” which recalled Penelope Cruz’s famous cry of “Peeeedro!” when she announced that the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film went to All About My Mother in 2000.

The prize offered by the Lumiere Institute has paid tribute every year since 2009 to an international film personality. Previous recipients include Clint Eastwood, Milos Forman, Gerard Depardieu, Ken Loach and Quentin Tarantino.

The next day, on Saturday, Almodovar announced that he has begun pre-production for his next film and that on Monday he will begin finding locations for the shoot, but specified it will take place “in various points around Spain’s geography, as well as in Madrid.”

“About the rest, the actors and other details, we’ll have time to talk about that in the coming months,” Almodovar said, after confessing that his visit to the Lumiere Festival has been a “delightful pause” in his new moviemaking project.