The flamboyant icon of Spanish cinema and world-famous director and screenwriter Pedro Almodóvar is to be the next President of the Jury for the Festival International du Film de Cannes, which begins on 17th May and will be celebrating its 70th edition.
Responding to the invitation of Pierre Lescure and Thierry Frémaux, the filmmaker said: ‘I am very happy to be able to celebrate the Festival de Cannes 70th anniversary from such a privileged position. I am grateful, honoured and a 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.’
With his dazzling and iconoclastic 35-year filmography, this virtuoso storyteller has forged a strong bond with filmgoers the world over. From Pepi, Luci, Bom (Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón, 1982) to Julieta (2016), his 20 films form an incandescent œuvre, a legacy of his punk, protest-filled youth, and driven by an insatiable passion for female figures and the history of film itself. Ever surprising and eclectic but always coherent, the director from La Mancha can turn his hand to any genre – vaudeville, farce, tragedy, fantasy. musical or thriller – while never losing sight of his pet themes: passion, filiation, destiny, guilt and buried secrets.