Pedro Almodóvar's latest film, The Room Next Door (or La habitación de al lado), was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. The film is also noteworthy as Almodóvar's English-language debut, with a Spanish release scheduled for October 18. The film stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore.
"I'll sleep with my door open. And the day you find it closed is the day it has happened," Swinton's character tells her friend, played by Moore, asking her to be at her side during her death. The film focuses on the last days of a terminal cancer patient.
"The decision to end one's life, to bid farewell to this world with dignity, is a fundamental issue that has nothing to do with beliefs and everything to do with politics," Almodóvar said.
Almodóvar's work has long been acclaimed for its sensitivity to human relationships. He has emphasized that accompanying a terminally ill person is one of humanity's greatest qualities, expressing that dying with dignity is a "fundamental right". The director's famous passion for colour is a response to his mother who spent many years in mourning, and against the blackness that he believes goes against nature.
Almodóvar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), a dark kitschy comedy about chaos surrounding a recently dumped woman, marked his emergence as a key figure in Spanish cinema. His debut feature film, Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom, captured the cultural and sexual freedom of post-Franco Spain.
He won two Oscars, for All About My Mother and Talk to Her.
This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq
Sources: awardswatch.com, The Guardian, The New York Times, NBC, zeta.com.pa.