Venice, Almodovar Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

2019-08-26T15:08:07.777Z

Pedro Almodóvar was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement for a director of the 76th Venice International Film Festival (August 28-September 7). "I am very excited and honored by the gift of this Golden Lion - said Almodovar -. I have wonderful memories of the Venice Film Festival. This Lion will become my mascot, along with the two cats I live with. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this award ". "My international debut - the Spanish director recalled, returning from the experience of jury president at the Cannes Film Festival - took place there in 1983 with the indiscreet charm of sin. It was the first time that one of my films was traveling outside from Spain. It was my international baptism and it was a wonderful experience, as was my return with Donne on the brink of a nervous breakdown in 1988 ". The decision to assign the Lion to Aldomovar is made by the Board of the Venice Biennale chaired by Paolo Baratta, who endorsed the proposal of the exhibition's director Alberto Barbera according to which "Almodovar is not only the largest and most influential Spanish director after Buñuel, but the author who was able to offer post-Francoist Spain the most articulate, controversial and provocative portrait The themes of transgression, desire and identity - he explained - are the chosen terrain of his works, imbued with of corrosive humor and cloaked in a visual splendor that gives unpublished glow to the aesthetics camp and the pop-art to which it refers explicitly: the pain of love, the yearning of abandonment, the incoherence of desire and the lacerations of depression - he added -, merge into a film at the turn of the melodrama and its parody, drawing on vertices of emotional authenticity that redeem any formal excesses. that Almodovar excels above all in painting incredibly original female portraits, by virtue of the rare empathy that allows him to represent his strength, emotional richness and - he concluded barbera - the inevitable weaknesses with rare and touching authenticity ".