The Hamptons Film Festival has finalized its 2021 slate, with the 71-year-old Spanish Oscar-winning director’s latest film making the list.
Almodovar’s Parallel Mothers, starring Penelope Cruz, has been added to the festival’s Spotlight section, alongside Cyrano, The Lost Daughter, The Power of the Dog, joining C’mon C’mon and Jockey.
Parallel Mothers received a 5-minute standing ovation when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival as the fest’s opening night film. It earned Cruz the Volpi Cup for Best Actress during the festival’s closing ceremony.
Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, starring Tony Revolori, will be the closing-night film on October 13, while Pablo Larraín’s Spencerwill be the Centerpiece Film in its East Coast premiere.
The festival is opening on October 7 with the world premiere of Matthew Heineman’s COVID-19 documentary The First Wave. The 29th edition of the fest will feature a lineup of films that are 53% female-directed and rep 34 countries.
The festival will run as a hybrid in-person/virtual event. Find more info here.
Penelope Cruz’s latest performance is already earning her some hardware…
The 47-year-old Spanish Oscar-winning actress was awarded the Volpi Cup Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Cruz, in an upset for Spencer star Kristen Stewart, won the award for the performance in Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers.
In her acceptance, she said the honor was 100% his, saying, “thank you once again for your trust in me, for inspiring me every day with your search for truth inside and outside the set… you have created magic again.”
Cruz further dedicated the win to her husband Javier Bardem and their children as well as to Bardem’s recently deceased mother. Pilar Bardem “did so much for actors and actresses in our country and her love and passion for this wonderful profession was huge,” said Cruz, adding, “At the end of our last conversation she told me, ‘I love you.’ She was very fragile and I thought those were her last words to me, but then very quiet and very soft and with a smile on her face she said to me two more words ‘Coppa Volpi’… This is for all the mothers.”
Parallell Mothers centers on two single women, who meet in a hospital room where they are both going to give birth. One is middle aged and doesn’t regret it, while the other is adolescent and scared. The two women form a strong bond with one another as they both confront motherhood.
Chilean filmmakers Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña won the Best Short Film prize.
They took home the award for their film Los Huesos, a fictitious take on the world’s first animated film, which uses a three-person melodrama as a metaphor for Chile’s turbulent socio-political regime. Dated in 1901 and excavated in 2021 as Chile drafts a new constitution, the “found” footage shows a young girl performing a ritual with human body parts. The corpses are revealed as the bodies of Diego Portales and Jaime Guzmán, central figures in the construction of authoritarian and oligarchic Chile.
French-Lebanese filmmaker Audrey Diwan won the Venice Film Festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, for her 1963-set abortion drama L’Evénement (Happening).
Here’s the list of the award winners:
VENICE 78
Golden Lion L’Evénement, dir: Audrey Diwan
Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize The Hand Of God, dir: Paolo Sorrentino
Silver Lion, Best Director
Jane Campion, The Power Of The Dog
Volpi Cup Best Actress
Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers
Volpi Cup Best Actor
John Arcilla, On The Job: The Missing 8
Best Screenplay
Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter
Special Jury Prize Il Buco, dir: Michelangelo Frammartino
Marcello Mastroianni Award for for Best New Young Actor or Actress
Filippo Scotti, The Hand Of God
HORIZONS
Best Film Pilgrims, dir: Laurynas Bareisa
Best Director
Eric Gravel, A Plein Temps
Special Jury Prize El Gran Movimiento, dir: Kiro Russo
Best Actress
Laure Calamy, A Plein Temps
Best Actor
Piseth Chhun, White Building
Best Screenplay
Ivan Ostrochovský, Peter Kerekes: 107 Mothers
Best Short Film Los Huesos, dirs: Cristóbal León, Joaquín Cociña
Lion of the Future – Luigi De Laurentiis Award For A Debut Film Imaculat, dirs: Monica Stan, George Chiper Lillemark
VENICE VR EXPANDED
Grand Jury Prize for Best VR Goliath: Playing With Reality, dirs: Barry Gene Murphy, May Abdalla
Best VR Experience Le Bal De Paris De Blanca Li, dir: Blanca Li
Best VR Story End of Night, dir: David Adler
HORIZONS EXTRA
Audience Award The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titanic, dir: Teemu Nikki
Sony Pictures Classics has acquired all rights in North America, Australia and New Zealand to Parallel Mothers (Madres Paralelas), starring the 46-year-old Spanish Oscar-winning actress.
It’s the 13th collaboration between the distributor and director/producer Pedro Almodóvar’s production company El Deseo.
Production began in Madrid last month on the film, which reunites the Spanish filmmaker with longtime collaborators Cruz, Julieta Serrano and Rossy de Palma.
Parallel Mothers is a drama that centers on three mothers, portrayed by Cruz, Aitana Sánchez Gijón and Milena Smit.
The film expands Almodóvar’s previous depictions of womanhood by turning his focus on imperfect mothers, in a departure from his prior work exploring mothers and motherhood.
Written by Almodóvar, the film also stars Israel Elejalde.
The film is produced by Agustín Almodóvar and Esther García through El Deseo.
Sony Pictures Classics recently released Almodóvar’s short film The Human Voice, starring Tilda Swinton, in theaters alongside a digitally restored re-issue of Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. It will be available to stream on HBO Max starting on April 30.
Almodóvar won two Oscars for best foreign language film for All About My Mother and original screenplay for his 2002 title Talk to Her (Hable con Ella).
Cruz has starred in several of Almodovar’s films, including All About My Mother, I’m So Excited!, Volver, Broken Embraces, and Pain and Glory.
Pedro Almodovar is thisclose to starting work on his next film…
The 71-year-old Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker is preparing to head into production on his next movie Parallel Mothers(Madres Paralelas).
The film will star Penelope Cruz alongside the newly-announced Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Israel Elejalde and Milena Smit.
The film is scheduled to begin filming by the end of March in Spain. Almodovar’s El Deseo is producing.
Almodovar said of the project:
“With Parallel Mothers I return to the female universe, to motherhood, to family. I speak of the importance of ancestors and descendants. The inevitable presence of memory. There are many mothers in my filmography, the ones that are part of this story are very different.
“As a storyteller, imperfect mothers inspire me most at this time. Penélope Cruz, Aitana Sánchez Gijón and the young Milena Smit will play the three mothers in the film, accompanied by Israel Elejalde in the main male character. I also have the collaboration of my beloved Julieta Serrano and Rossy de Palma. Parallel Mothers will be an intense drama. Or so I hope.”
This will be Cruz’s seventh film with Almodovar. She first appeared in Live Flesh in 1997. Her other Almodovar credits includeAll About My Mother, Volver, Broken Embraces, I’m So Excited and Pain and Glory.
Sánchez-Gijón’s previous credits includeA Walk in the Cloudsand The Machinist.
