News

I often assume that filmmakers don’t have a favorite movie within their own oeuvre. That’s like asking a parent to pick a favorite child. Parents are supposed to love all of their kids equally. However, Guillermo del Toro does not love all of his cinematic offspring equally. He has a clear favorite and he isn’t afraid to speak up about it. As it turns out, his most cherished effort is a feature he co-wrote and directed nearly 25 years ago. It’s a Gothic ghost story set in an orphanage.

If you haven’t guessed yet, I’m talking about The Devil’s Backbone. How do I know that the flick is del Toro’s personal favorite? I know because he told me. Well, he told us all via a Twitter (it will never be X to me) post a while back. The auteur creator’s tweet simply reads:...

While Gene Hackman and Quincy Jones received stand-alone memorial tributes during Sunday’s Oscars telecast, several other notables did not appear in the show’s annual “in memoriam” segment.

Michelle Trachtenberg, who died suddenly last week at age 39, was one prominent name not included, to the dismay of many social media users. While perhaps best-known for work on TV series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she also appeared in a number of films including Harriet the Spy, EuroTrip and Ice Princess.

Others excluded from the montage included British actress Olivia Hussey. She won numerous awards, including a Golden Globe for playing the female lead in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film version of Romeo & Juliet and later turned up in Black Christmas and Death on the Nile.

Hussey and her then-young co-star Leonard Whiting sued Paramount Pictures in 2023, alleging they suffered physical and mental pain as well as “extreme and severe...

We lost some entertainment giants in 2024.

Among the big-screen legends who died during the past 12 months were Donald Sutherland, James Earl Jones, Maggie Smith, Carl Weathers, Shelley Duvall, Dabney Coleman, Teri Garr, Louis Gossett Jr., Anouk Aimée, Marisa Paredes and Gena Rowlands.

Related: Saying Goodbye: A Video Tribute To The Hollywood And Media Figures We’ve Lost In 2024

The TV world mourns the likes of Bob Newhart, John Amos, Phil Donahue, Linda Lavin, David Soul, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Martin Mull, Shannen Doherty, Michael Cole, Richard Lewis, Richard Simmons, James B. Sikking, Peter Marshall and Joe Flaherty.

Filmmakers and producers who left us include Norman Jewison, Roger Corman, Al Ruddy, Jon Landau, Lynda Obst, Jim Abrahams, Charles Shyer, Irv Wilson and Paolo Taviani.

The industry also paid tribute to such top executives as Charles Dolan, Paula Weinstein, Jamie Kellner, Richard Parsons, Gerald Levin and Paul Fox.

Broadway’s lights were a...

The Oscars will continue their long-running tradition of honoring celebrated filmmakers with their "In Memoriam" segment on Sunday. ABC will broadcast the event hosted by Conan O'Brien with Hulu streaming the ceremony live at 7 p.m. Et; 4 p.m. Pt.

Among the Oscar winners and nominees who will have their lives celebrated are Teri Garr, Louis Gossett Jr., James Earl Jones, Jon Landau, David Lynch, Joan Plowright, Gena Rowlands, Albert S. Ruddy, David Seidler, Richard M. Sherman, Maggie Smith, Robert Towne, and honorary recipients Roger Corman, Quincy Jones, and Donald Sutherland.

There are more than 100 movie professionals who died since the last Academy Awards ceremony. Each person who was an Academy member is designated below with **. Keep in mind that producers usually choose between 40 and 50 for the segment and that a performer has not yet been confirmed.

Edited to add two-time Oscar winner Gene Hackman.

Jim Abrahams — Director/Writer

Anouk Aimée...

One of the most emotional segments of the annual SAG Awards ceremony is the “In Memoriam.” Netflix will live stream the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday with host Kristen Bell.

Among the Oscar winners and nominees who will have their lives celebrated are Teri Garr, Louis Gossett, Jr., James Earl Jones, David Lynch, Joan Plowright, Gena Rowlands, Maggie Smith, and honorary recipient Donald Sutherland. Some of the past Primetime Emmy winners and nominees include John Amos, Dabney Coleman, Shelley Duvall, Linda Lavin, Martin Mull, Bob Newhart, and Alan Rachins,

Seesag Life Achievement award: Full gallery of recipients since 1995

There are more than 100 actors and actresses who died since the last SAG Awards ceremony:

Marla Adams

Anouk Aimée

Jean Allison

John Amos

Erich Anderson

John Aprea

Niels Arestrup

Erica Ash

John Ashton

Susan Backlinie

Barbara Baldavin

Bobby Banas

Terrence Beasor

Joan Benedict

Meg Bennett

Robyn Bernard

Mark Blankfield

Tom Bower...

In a historic first, Marcel Barrera’s heroic bus driver heart warmer “The 47” and Arantxa Echeverría terrorist org infiltrator thriller “Undercover” became the first films ever to share the best picture Spanish Academy Goya on Saturday night at a ceremony where Richard Gere lashed out at Donald Trump.

“We are in a very dark place in America where we have a bully and a thug who is the president of the United States,” Gere said, accepting this year’s International Goya.

A surprise, Pedro Almodóvar won best-adapted screenplay and best cinematography (Eduard Grau), despite not being nominated for best picture.

“In ‘The Room Next Door,’ John Turturro’s character warns Julianne Moore at a meal that there is nothing that can accelerate the end of the planet more than the survival of the level of neoliberalism and the rise of the extreme right. And here we have both of them walking side by side,...

Karla Sofía Gascón reads the hate. All of it. Alongside the flood of praise for her lead performance in the late-breaking Oscar favorite Emilia Pérez, a steady trickle of vitriol has flowed in the gutters of social media. When we meet in her native Madrid, Gascón takes out her phone to show me messages she has screenshotted and marked up. “I hope you die before you make another movie,” spewed one X user. After beloved Spanish actress Marisa Paredes passed away a few days before our interview, another anonymous online wit mused, “I wish you could have died instead of her.” She’s also received death threats in Mexico, where Emilia Pérez is set and where she has spent much of her professional life: “I was told I would be found dismembered in a bag.”

Should she be nominated for an Oscar, which most pundits expect, Gascón is poised to...

Marisa Paredes, the admired Spanish actress who collaborated with Pedro Almodóvar in such films as The Flower of My Secret, All About My Mother and The Skin I Live In, has died. She was 78.

Her death was announced Tuesday by the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain, which called her one of the country’s “most iconic actors … her body of work was defined by women who were strong, ambivalent, broken, passionate, enigmatic, but who were, above all, very human.”

Almodóvar told Spanish public broadcaster Rtve that “it is as if I woke up from a bad dream … I am struggling to come to terms with Marisa’s death.” In their country, she was known as “an Almodóvar girl.”

Paredes also portrayed Roberto Benigni’s socialite mother-in-law in Life Is Beautiful (1997) and the head of the orphanage in Guillermo del Toro’s horror film The Devil’s Backbone (2001), set during the Spanish Civil War.

Roles in All About My Mother and Life is Beautiful cemented her status as one of Spain’s ‘most iconic’ actors

The award-winning Spanish actor Marisa Paredes, best known to international audiences for her work with directors such as Pedro Almodóvar, Guillermo del Toro and Roberto Benigni, has died at the age of 78.

Announcing her death on Tuesday, Spain’s film academy said the country had lost one of its “most iconic actors” and a beloved veteran of more than 75 films.

Marisa Paredes, a grand dame of Spanish cinema, died on Tuesday in Madrid from heart failure. She was 78.

While she acted in 75 movies, she will be best remembered for the five films she starred in directed by Pedro Almodóvar: “Dark Habits” (1983), “High Heels” (1991), “The Flower of My Secret” (1995), “All About My Mother” (1999) and “The Skin I Live In” (2011). Of all these, she thought she turned in one of her career-best performances in “The Flower of My Secret,” which marks the beginning of Almodóvar’s return to his roots and world of his mother, a re-connection which continues to this day.

In “The Flower of My Secret,” Paredes played a chic romantic novelist seemingly at first a fish out of water in the village where she was born.

In real life, Paredes had a natural elegance, compounded by her favouring dresses by Spain-based designer Sybille which J.A. Bayona noted, reacting to her death,...

Marisa Paredes, a well-known personality in Spanish cinema and close colleague of famed director Pedro Almodóvar, has died at the age of 78. The Spanish Film Academy reported her death, writing, “Spanish cinema is losing one of its most iconic actresses.”

Paredes’ career lasted nearly six decades, including over 75 films and a similar number of television shows. She is largely recognized as one of the most accomplished actresses of her time. Her work with Almodóvar includes remarkable performances in films like High Heels (1991), The Flower of My Secret (1995), All About My Mother (1999), and The Skin I Live In (2011).

Her journey to popularity was fueled by personal dedication. In an emotional interview with Spain’s Tve in June, Paredes discussed her poor beginnings as “the daughter of a doorkeeper.” At 15, she went on a hunger strike to encourage her father to support her acting career.

Desolado por la noticia del fallecimiento de Marisa Paredes,...

Marisa Paredes, the star of Pedro Almodóvar’s High Heels and The Flower Of My Secret, has died aged 78.

Paredes’ extensive career spanned nearly 80 feature films and a similar number of television productions over six decades.

Paredes also served as president of the Spanish Film Academy from 2000-2003 and received the industry’s highest awards, including an honorary Goya for lifetime achievement in 2018, the National Cinematography Award in 1996, and the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 2007.

Her final film, road movie Emergency Exit, was directed by Luis Miñarro; it filmed earlier this year and is still to be released.

Marisa Paredes, the Spanish actress who starred in several Pedro Almodóvar features, has died. She was 78.

The Spanish Film Academy announced her passing, saying “Spanish cinema is losing one of its most iconic actresses.”

Paredes appeared in more than 75 films, but was best known for her partnership with director Almodóvar, for whom she filmed 1991’s High Heels, 1995’s The Flower of My Secret, 1999’s All About My Mother and The Skin I Live In in 2011.

She was nominated a Goya Award for Best Actress for her role in The Flower of My Secret, having first worked with Almodóvar in 1983’s Entre Tinieblas, and ultimately gained the moniker ‘Almodóvar’s Girl.’

She also acted in Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful, Arturo Ripstein’s Deep Crimson and Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone.

Deadline Related Video:

In 2018, she was given an honorary Goya award after twice being nominated for Best Actress,...

When you purchase through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The Substance is a satirical body horror film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat. The 2024 film follows the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a popular star renowned for an aerobics show but on her 50th birthday, she gets fired from her boss for being old. She soon finds a laboratory that offers her a drug that promises to transform her into a better and younger version of herself. The Substance stars Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in the lead roles with Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia, Oscar Lesage, Tiffany Hofstetter, and Alexandra Papoulias Barton starring in supporting roles. So, if you loved the body horror, biting commentary, and compelling characters in The Substance here are some similar movies you should check out next.

The Neon Demon (Prime Video) Credit – Amazon Studios

The Neon Demon is a psychological horror film...

Oscar-winning Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar has made a name for himself with a series of brightly colored, delightfully kinky and unabashedly melodramatic titles, mixing comedy, drama, sex and violence to great success. He shows no signs of slowing down, with his latest outing in 2019 being the Oscar-nominated “Pain and Glory.” Let’s take a look back at all 22 of his films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1949 in Spain, Almodovar came to prominence during La Movida Madrilena, a cultural renaissance that blossomed at the end of Francoist Spain. Staring with his filmmaking debut “Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom” (1980), the openly gay director showed an affinity for oddballs and outsiders, populating his films with transvestites, transexuals and homosexuals, all of whom had previously been relegated to the closet. He also showed a talent for working with women, and throughout his 40 year career has placed actresses such as Penelope Cruz,...

On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.

First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.

Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation.

The Pitch: Through a Glass Very, Very Darkly

If Arthur Slugworth haunted your dreams as a child, then prepare for Günter Meisner to paint your adult nightmares with a sickly blue palette in “In a Glass Cage.”

German actor Meisner played a certain beloved chocolatier’s cadaverous arch-rival in Mel Stuart’s inherently creepy “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” in 1971 — exactly 15 years before he’d play a sadomasochistic Nazi doctor in Agustí Villaronga’s post-World War II revenge picture, “In a Glass Cage,” from 1986. And here, Meisner is just as lacking in...

I am Vicente.

After kicking off February with discussions of Albert Lewin’s 1945 adaptation of The Portrait of Dorian Gray (listen) and the perfectly serviceable remake of Friday the 13th (listen), we’re delving into the twisted mind of Pedro Almodóvar with his 2011 thriller The Skin I Live In.

In The Skin I Live In, skilled plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) has tried to develop a new super skin ever since his beloved wife was horribly burned in a car accident 12 years prior. Finally, Ledgard has created a skin that guards the body, but is still sensitive to touch. With the aid of his faithful housekeeper Marilia (Marisa Paredes), Ledgard tests his creation on Vera (Elena Anaya), a woman he keeps prisoner against her will in the basement of his Spanish mansion.

Being an Almodóvar film, there’s much more to this twisted plot than meets they eye.

Note: the following blog piece ran earlier this year. We’re re-posting today in honor of Trans Awareness Week, November 12-18. Special thanks to author Adam Vargas.

***

It’s no secret that the moving image can leave a lasting impact, both consciously and subconsciously. This is especially true regarding images of people engaged in struggle and/or enjoying wild success—a phenomenon that supports the necessity for thoughtful representation of people of all backgrounds and experiences in film.

Today, representation is too often conflated with diversity, but they’re not exactly the same thing. Representation goes beyond the surface inclusion of different types of people popular media—it’s about lived experience and authenticity. Of course there are all types of communities that haven’t received much authentic representations of themselves in traditional cinema. For example: the trans community, which is itself unique and disparate far beyond what has been rendered onscreen,...

Thierry Frémaux is best known internationally as the long-time head of France’s Cannes Film Festival, which is organized out of its offices in Paris’s trendy Marais neighborhood.

The double-hatted cinema expert is perhaps more in his element in his home city of Lyon, where he is the director of the Institut Lumière, situated on the site of the former mansion and factory of cinema pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière.

Alongside its late co-founders Bernard Chardère and Bertrand Tavernier, Frémaux has been a driving force behind the expansion of the institute and its activities, including the creation of its classic cinema-focused Lumière Film Festival, which has just wrapped its 15th edition.

Highlights this year included German director Wim Wenders receiving its prestigious Lumière Prize, following in the footsteps of the likes of Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Jane Campion and Francis Ford Coppola. As part of the honor, the Paris,...

Updated: German film master Wim Wenders was greeted like a rock star in Lyon, France, where he received an honorary tribute on Friday evening (Oct. 21) at the Lumiere Festival, a week-long celebration of classic cinema headed by Cannes festival boss Thierry Fremaux.

“I’ve received prizes in my life but this time it’s different, it’s the the prize of cinema!” said Wenders after stepping on stage to the beat of Texas’ “I Don’t Want a Lover.” Glancing at Fremaux who was standing nearby, Wenders added, with a cheeky smile, “I don’t want to say that a Palme d’Or is nothing. But the Lumiere Prize is unique and I’m proud of it!” Wenders, who won the Palme d’Or with “Paris, Texas,” is considered a Cannes regular. He’s presented his most iconic films there, including “Wings of Desire” which won best director. This year,...

Lyon, France — Four-time Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón and “Time Bandits” helmer Terry Gilliam will join a star director-studded lineup at this year’s Lumière Film Festival including Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne and Wim Wenders.

Cuarón is returning to Lyon – where he was a guest of honor in 2018 – to present a selection of films by Swiss filmmaker Alain Tanner.

Gilliam will screen the newly restored version of his 1995 sci-fi thriller “Twelve Monkeys.”

One of Anderson’s latest shorts, “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” part of four Roald Dahl adaptations to be released on Netflix later this month, will screen at Lyon’s plush 2,000-seat Auditorium, where he will give a masterclass.

Like other guests, he will not only be introducing a retrospective of his own films but works by others, as part of an ongoing drive by the festival “to strengthen the link between the past and the present of cinema,...

“Veneno” writer-director-creators Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo – popularly known as Los Javis – have dropped an international trailer for its sequel, “Vestida de Azul” (“Veneno 2: Dressed in Blue”) sharing it in exclusivity with Variety.

Sold to HBO Max for the U.S., where it aired to acclaim, “Veneno” was picked as one of Variety’s best international series in 2020.

This time round, Los Javis produce through Suma Content, the Madrid-based label they launched in 2021, where they also serve as its creative directors. The series is its fourth production after “Una navidad con Samantha Hudson,” a Christmas special, “Cardo,” and “Cardo 2.” An Atresplayer original series, “Vestidas de Azul” is produced for Atresmedia Television in collaboration with Suma Content. Atresmedia TV International Sales handles international distribution.

The trailer begins two years after “Veneno” with Valeria, her figure inspired by the real-life Spanish journalist Valeria Vegas who penned La Veneno’s memoirs, returning...

This article contains spoilers for "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio."

Even when adapting others' stories, Guillermo del Toro always puts a personal thumbprint on his movies. He remixed Mike Mignola's "Hellboy" as a superhero spin on Beauty and the Beast, reframing the relationship between the eponymous hero (Ron Perlman) and Liz Sherman (Selma Blair) as a love story. In his 2021 remake of "Nightmare Alley," he eschewed the ghostly black-and-white color scheme of the original film. Courtesy of cinematographer Dan Laustsen, del Toro's film mixed lurid, snowy blues with golden yellow hues; the blood really pops in both colors.

The filmmaker's most recent feature, the stop-motion "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio" was released on Netflix, to critical acclaim. The tale of the wooden boy is a classic that's been retold many times, but del Toro found a fresh way to spin the story and make it feel a piece with his films...

Marc Recha, director of “Pau and His Brother,” which played in Cannes competition, is initiating post-production on “Wild Road,” a thriller produced by Barcelona-based director label Parallamps.

Heaed by Montse Germán, a star in Cesc Gay’s “Fiction” and Sergi López” (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), “Wild Road” follows 50-year Ona, who is about to fulfill her dream of piloting a light aircraft. Then a chance encounter with some Serb ex-combatants will change her life and that of her loved ones, forcing her to face up to her own past.

A Locarno Fipresci prize winner for “The Cherry Tree,” in “Wild Road” Recha aims for a “cinema d’auteur for a wider audience. It’s a disturbing thriller but full of humanity,” producer Ana Stanič told Variety announcing “strong interest for the film in Spain, Central and Eastern Europe and further abroad.”

A sales agent deal is close to being closed.

The move...

Editor’s note: The following essay was written by filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar shortly after he attended the 94th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday. It was provided for IndieWire in an exclusive English translation. Almodóvar’s 2021 film “Parallel Mothers” was nominated for two awards: Best Actress (Penélope Cruz) and Best Original Score (Alberto Iglesias).

Yesterday was an exhausting day, especially in the evening. One of the secret reasons I have for being in Los Angeles (as well as going hand in hand with Penélope to the Dolby Theatre and experiencing in situ if her nomination still has a road to travel or if the prize was the nomination) is to meet with some actors as I think about the cast for my next film, which is starring Cate Blanchett and based on five stories by Lucia Berlin from her book “A Manual for Cleaning Women.” It’s an open secret, but I can’t discuss it,...

All products and services featured by IndieWire are independently selected by IndieWire editors. However, IndieWire may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

The countdown to Mother’s Day has begun! If you’re looking for movies to binge this weekend (or whenever you have the time), we collected a list of films that honor the complexities of motherhood. From dark comedies and feel-good dramas to thrillers and cult classics, these movies will pull at your heart strings, and in some cases, tickle your funny bone.

The selection of films below are streaming now on Amazon Prime, Hulu, or HBO Max. If you’re not signed up to any of those platforms, here’s a short breakdown of what they offer: Amazon Prime costs $12.99 a month which unlocks a massive digital store that has just about anything you might need,...

Cancelled last year, the 30th edition of the Nantes Spanish Film Festival will take place online from 25 March to 4 April, with three physical events in May and June. Forced to cancel last year due to the health crisis, the Nantes Spanish Film Festival has this time put together a hybrid programme for its 30th edition, which begins today and will take place in two parts: online from 25 March to 4 April and in cinemas with three events. Faithful to the organisation, actress Marisa Paredes has once again accepted to be the guest of honour for this edition....

Pedro Almodóvar’s challenging films shouldn’t be only for his dedicated fans: nobody mixes genuine human compassion with world-class filmmaking as well as he … while maintaining a marvelous sense of humor, of human proportion. This 1999 effort is perhaps Pedro’s strongest drama, and yet another heartfelt endorsement of womankind. For the life-beleaguered Manuela, tragedy and melodramatic setbacks only bring out a primal determination to heal all wounds.

All About My Mother

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1012

1999 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 101 min. / Todo sobre mi madre / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 28, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña, Antonia San Juan, Penélope Cruz, Rosa María Sardá, Toni Cantó, Eloy Azorín, Carlos Lozano.

Cinematography: Affonso Beato

Film Editor: José Salcedo

Original Music: Alberto Iglesias

Produced by Augustín Almodóvar

Written and Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

My descriptions of this movie can’t convey what a warm, moving, and even funny experience it is.

“Life Is Extremes”

By Raymond Benson

The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film of 1999 was Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother (Todo sobre mi madre), easily one of the now 70-year-old auteur’s most beloved and accomplished works. As actress Penélope Cruz states in one of the supplemental documentaries accompanying the film in Criterion’s magnificent new Blu-ray edition, Almodóvar makes movies about extremes and he makes movies about life. “Life is extremes,” she says, and it’s an apt description of Mother.

Almodóvar is known for his highly eccentric, colorful, and socio-political dramas and comedies that often take place in the worlds of theatre, the Lbgtq milieu, and the walks on the wild side of modern urban Spain, especially Barcelona. He can be surreal, harkening back to the style of his great fellow countryman, Luis Buñuel, but one can see the more significant influence from...

We’ve got more Spaghetti western action from Guest Reviewer Lee Broughton — the more obscure they become, the more fanciful the concept. This creative 1968 entry foregrounds a gothic vibe and employs imagery and narrative devices that Lee says would fit well in a horror movie. Italo western fans know the regular actors Fernando Sancho, Femi Benussi and Aldo Sambrell, who star alongside Lang Jeffries and future Pedro Almodóvar star Marisa Paredes.

Requiem for Gringo

Region-free Blu-ray

Wild East

1968 / Color / 1.66 widescreen / 98 min. / Requiem para el gringo, Requiem for a Gringo, Duel in the Eclipse / Street Date, 23 October 2018 / $16.28

Starring: Lang Jeffries, Femi Benussi, Fernando Sancho, Ruben Rojo, Carlo Simoni, Carlo Gaddi, Aldo Sambrell, Marisa Paredes, Giuly Garr, Angel Alvarez.

Cinematography: Mario Pacheco

Film Editor: Jose Antonio Rojo

Production Designer: Eduardo Torre de la Fuente

Original Music: Angelo Francesco Lavagnino

Written by Enrico Colombo, Giuliana Garavagli, Maria del Carmen Martinez Roman

Produced by...

Pedro Almodovar celebrates his 70th birthday on September 25, 2019. The Oscar-winning Spanish auteur has made a name for himself with a series of brightly colored, delightfully kinky and unabashedly melodramatic titles, mixing comedy, drama, sex and violence to great success. He shows no signs of slowing down, with his latest outing in 2019 being the critically acclaimed “Pain and Glory.” But where does it fall with the rest of his filmography? In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at all 21 of his films, ranked worst to best.

SEEPenelope Cruz movies: 15 greatest films ranked worst to best

Born in 1949 in Spain, Almodovar came to prominence during La Movida Madrilena, a cultural renaissance that blossomed at the end of Francoist Spain. Staring with his filmmaking debut “Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom” (1980), the openly gay director showed an affinity for oddballs and outsiders, populating his films with transvestites,...

From Filmmaker‘s archives, and online for the first time, here is our interview with Pedro Almodovar about All About My Mother as well as many other things, including Tennessee Williams, rejecting primary colors and the difficulties, sometimes, of being “Almodovar.” This piece originally ran in our Fall, 1999 issue. “Mainly women,” says Leo, the desperate, devastated, lovelorn romance writer played by Marisa Paredes in Pedro Almodovar’s eleventh feature film, The Flower of My Secret. “Adventurous, suicidal lunatics.” He might as well be talking about the characters found in Almodovar’s films, for his is a body of work dominated by actresses, […]...

From Filmmaker‘s archives, and online for the first time, here is our interview with Pedro Almodovar about All About My Mother as well as many other things, including Tennessee Williams, rejecting primary colors and the difficulties, sometimes, of being “Almodovar.” This piece originally ran in our Fall, 1999 issue. “Mainly women,” says Leo, the desperate, devastated, lovelorn romance writer played by Marisa Paredes in Pedro Almodovar’s eleventh feature film, The Flower of My Secret. “Adventurous, suicidal lunatics.” He might as well be talking about the characters found in Almodovar’s films, for his is a body of work dominated by actresses, […]...

Netflix has gone into production on its latest original movie in Spain, ‘A pesar de todo,’ staring Blanza Suárez, Macarena García, Amaia Salamanca and Belén Cuesta.

Directed by Argentine-born Gabriela Tagliavini the comedy returns Netflix to women character-driven narratives of other productions such as “The Cable Girls,” and links it once more to one of the Spanish production houses which arguably has best explored a woman’s world, Ramón Campos and Teresa Fernández-Valdés’s Bambu Producciones. the producers of “The Cable Girls, “Velvet” and “Velvet Collection.”

The four actresses play sisters embroiled in a mystery case sparked by the last wish of their dead mother. Before dying, the mother (Marisa Paredes) makes a video for each of her daughters which contain a series of revelations about a family secret which will turn their world upside down and set them off on a common journey which will help them rediscover each other and themselves.

The festival’s 7th edition will open with ‘Funny Story’.

Melissa Leo will receive the Icon award at the seventh edition of the Mallorca International Film Festival (October 25-31).

Leo will attend the event to accept her award, which will be given as part of a centrepiece gala screening of The Fighter. She won the Oscar for best supporting actress in 2011 for her role in David O’Russell’s boxing drama.

The Mallorca event will open with Michael J. Gallagher’s Funny Story, which premiered at Utah’s Slamdance Film Festival in the United States in January 2018.

The festival will screen 15 narrative features,...

An early hit with festivalgoers who prefer to look outside the Official Selection, Jaime Rosales’s Directors’ Fortnight entry Petra proved the Spanish director to be a fluid and unpredictable talent. Arguably most famous—or perhaps infamous—for the almost entirely dialogue-free 2008 Basque terrorist drama Bullet in the Head, Rosales this time presents a very subtle mystery-thriller. Sharing DNA with the work of his compatriot Pedro Almodóvar—not least because it features a supporting turn by Almodóvar regular Marisa Paredes—Petra sees rising star Bárbara Lennie in the title role, as a woman who enrolls in a mentoring project with a famous artist, Jaume (a terrific debut by the non-professional Joan Botey).

Told using chapters that appear in non-chronological order, the film plays games with time before reaching a wholly unexpected climax. Rosales told Deadline that taking such an experimental approach to an otherwise conventional story was part of the project’s appeal.

Long-established art-house director Jaime Rosales set out to make his most accessible feature with “Petra,” a film about lies and self-discovery that indeed could well be his most popular work to date. It looks gorgeous, boasting sterling performances and an initially intriguing storyline which Rosales shuffles in an occasionally non-linear manner, not so far removed from such previous experimentations as “The Dream and the Silence.” There’s also Hélène Louvart’s elegantly fluid camerawork, gliding across and through spaces, always aware that worlds exist just outside the frame. But what begins as a psychologically and visually lush exploration of a woman’s quest to establish her paternity turns around the half-way mark into an overburdened plot set off by those constant panning shots which themselves become too rich for digestion. The disappointment is inescapable given the excitement of the first part, yet there’s enough to chew on, and indeed,...

In a deal announced Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival, Vicente Canales’ Barcelona-based Film Factory has unveiled the sale of Jaime Rosales’ Directors’ Fortnight entry “Petra” to Condor Distribution in France and September Films for Benelux countries.

“Petra” is a pan-European co-production between Rosales’ Fresdeval Films and Wanda Vision – both based out of Madrid –Oberon Cinematográfica from Barcelona, Les Productions Balthazar in Paris and Copenhagen’s Snowglobe.

The film follows Petra, a woman who has always had the identity of her father hidden from her. When her mother passes away, Petra sets out on her own, and starts a residency under a famous artist named Jaume, a powerful and ruthless man she suspects may be her father. She also meets Jaume’s son Lucas, and his wife Marisa. The stories of the four then wind together and violent secrets unearth which push everyone to their limits, before a twist...

Handia and Summer 1993 were the other two big winners of the night.

Source: Celsius Entertainment

‘The Bookshop’

The Bookshop, starring Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy and Patricia Clarkson, won best film, best director for Isabel Coixet and best adapted script at the 2018 edition of the Goya Awards given by the Spanish Film Academy on Saturday. Handia and Summer 1993 were the other two big winners of the night.

The Bookshop and Handia had 12 and 13 nominations espectively.

Isabel Coixet attended the ceremony in Madrid with the two co-stars of the film, Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy, nominated for best actress and best supporting actor respectively. Her adaptation of the story by Booker Prize-winning novelist Penelope Fitzgerald, set in 1959s Britain, has been a success at the Spanish box office so far grossing €2.47m ($3m).

Isabel Coixet’s win and the success of Summer 1993, directed by Carla Simón demonstrated a stronger female presence in the Spanish film industry in the wave of...

F.J. Ossang. Photo by Locarno Festival / Sailas VanettiA punk poet and musician, F.J. Ossang’s shorts and features produced since the early 1980s pull vividly from silent cinema, particularly German Expressionism, as well as American noir, to reinvent cinema's legacy for a new era. His latest movie, 9 Doigts (9 Fingers), which premiered in competition at the Locarno Festival and has now traveled to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, begins as a cryptic gangster film—shot in silken black and white 35mm—before the criminals make a break for a cargo ship, plunging the film in the kind of feverish maritime malaise found in Joseph Conrad’s The Shadow Line, Georges Franju’s 1973 TV adaptation of that novel, and pre-Code tropical hothouses like Safe in Hell (1931).But as beautiful as the setting and photography is—and as delirious as some of the cynical, doom-saying criminals are, each prone to mythopoetic threats...

We're celebrating Pedro Almodóvar all week. Here's Nathaniel R on Dark Habits (1983)

Julieta Serrano and Marisa Paredes in Dark Habits (1983)

It's a Pedro Party! For the next week we'll be celebrating the career of the great auteur Pedro Almodóvar. We were just discussing which male actors we'd love for him to work with but let's let the official party begin with one of his nearly all-female efforts Dark Habits. His 1983 "pelicula" is about a cabaret singer Yolonda (Cristina Sánchez Pascual) who is hiding out in a convent of wacky nuns. But let's not confuse the movie with Sister Act because it would eat that 1992 comedy and then apologize sheepishly over a cake and acid dessert... ...

Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar is the next President of the Jury for the Festival International du Film de Cannes, which begins on the Riviera on May 17 and runs through May 28, 2017.

Cannes executives Pierre Lescure and Thierry Frémaux stated:

“For its 70th edition, the Festival de Cannes is delighted to welcome a unique and hugely popular artist. His works have already carved out an eternal niche in the history of film. A long and loyal friendship binds Pedro Almodóvar to the Festival, where he was a member of the Jury under the presidency of Gérard Depardieu.”

The filmmaker said:

“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.

Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar is the next President of the Jury for the Festival International du Film de Cannes, which begins on the Riviera on May 17 and runs through May 28, 2017.

Cannes executives Pierre Lescure and Thierry Frémaux stated:

“For its 70th edition, the Festival de Cannes is delighted to welcome a unique and hugely popular artist. His works have already carved out an eternal niche in the history of film. A long and loyal friendship binds Pedro Almodóvar to the Festival, where he was a member of the Jury under the presidency of Gérard Depardieu.”

The filmmaker said:

“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.

Stefan Zweig (Josef Hader) - "He was considered one of the greatest travelers, the big European mastermind of the European Union."

In 2000, Max Färberböck's Aimée & Jaguar star Maria Schrader was on the Berlin Film Festival jury with Andrzej Wajda, Gong Li, Walter Salles, and Marisa Paredes when Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia won the Golden Bear and the number of translators had an impact on her. In New York, the director of Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe and I discussed her creative team, including co-writer Jan Schomburg, cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler, and editor Hansjörg Weißbrich. We followed a Zweig trail from Terence Davies on Max Ophüls' Letter From An Unknown Woman to George Prochnik's influence on Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel to Varian Fry, Lion Feuchtwanger and Defying The Nazis: The Sharp's War, directed by Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky.

Maria Schrader: "I dedicated the movie to Denis Poncet.

When you think Pedro Almodóvar, you think Rossy de Palma. The actress’ unconventional, but striking, beauty has often made her the most memorable player in the auteur’s works, from her uptight virgin in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, to the heroine’s sister in The Flower of My Secret. In Julieta, which marks lucky number seven in de Palma’s collaborations with Almodóvar, she plays Marian, an overprotective housekeeper who looks after what she thinks should be her employer Xoan’s (Daniel Grao) interests. After meeting the title character, played in younger age by Adriana Ugarte, who is about to become the new mistress of the house, Marian reveals a secret that sets the entire plot into its tragic motion.

The usually glamorous actress – she’s been muse to designers like Thierry Mugler and Jean-Paul Gaultier – is seen sporting a frumpy, matronly look as Marian, in...

“Introducing the Academy class of 2016,” reads the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences website announcement of its invited new members Wednesday. And while joining that august organization is a singular honor, many say they were surprised to learn of their inclusion — mainly because they hadn’t applied for membership. Traditionally, that’s a laborious process that can take years before you get recommended by peers, vetted by your branch, and finally invited. Every year it’s a shock that someone like, say Tina Fey, IFC’s Arianna Bocco, last year’s Oscar-winner Margaret Sixel (“Mad Max: Fury Road”), or Oscar marketer Lisa Taback, wasn’t already a member.

Read More: Oscars So White: 8 Ways to Solve the Academy’s Diversity Problem

At the heart of the Academy’s complex diversity issue is how much the Oscars reflect the way that the Academy likes to view itself. Believe me, they were horrified when,...

“Introducing the Academy class of 2016,” reads the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences website announcement of its invited new members Wednesday. And while joining that august organization is a singular honor, many say they were surprised to learn of their inclusion — mainly because they hadn’t applied for membership. Traditionally, that’s a laborious process that can take years before you get recommended by peers, vetted by your branch, and finally invited. Every year it’s a shock that someone like, say Tina Fey, IFC’s Arianna Bocco, last year’s Oscar-winner Margaret Sixel (“Mad Max: Fury Road”), or Oscar marketer Lisa Taback, wasn’t already a member.

Read More: Oscars So White: 8 Ways to Solve the Academy’s Diversity Problem

At the heart of the Academy’s complex diversity issue is how much the Oscars reflect the way that the Academy likes to view itself. Believe me, they were horrified when,...

On Mubi Off is a bi-weekly column exploring two films: one currently available on Mubi in the United States, and the other screening offsite (in theaters, on VOD, Blu-ray/DVD, etc).On MUBIIn a Glass Cage (Agustí Villaronga, 1986)A number of directors have put audiences in the head of a murderer using a subjective point of view shot—Michael Powell, John Carpenter, Dario Argento, to name but a very few. The opening sequence of Agustí Villaronga's 1986 feature film debut, In a Glass Cage, further perverts that sense of empathetic identification by using subjective Pov to put us in the mind of a killer in the making. We don't know who this germinal cut-throat is at first, only that he or she is bearing witness to a truly unspeakable horror: a middle-aged man lasciviously caressing, then beating to death, a naked, bloodied and helpless adolescent boy. Though the actions playing...

'Yesterday' movie: Leleti Khumalo and Lihle Mvelase. 'Yesterday' movie review: Fantastic central performance in South African AIDS drama To date, nowhere has the AIDS pandemic been felt more strongly than in Sub-Saharan Africa, home to approximately 10 percent of the world's population and two-thirds of the planet's 30-35 million AIDS cases. In the past thirty years, it is estimated that more than 20 million Sub-Saharan Africans have died from complications of the disease.* Even today, drug cocktails that are relatively accessible in other parts of the globe are still beyond the means of the vast majority of Africans. Writer-director Darrell Roodt's South African drama Yesterday is set in this catastrophic scenario. The film depicts the effects of AIDS in the life of a young Zulu woman who contracts HIV from her husband. Although Roodt's narrative maintains its focus on the plight of one particular individual, the (for non-Zulus) quirkily named Yesterday represents millions of other women,...

The King of Havana

Director: Agusti Villaronga // Writer: Agusti Villaronga

Spanish director Agusti Villaronga is most infamously known for his delightfully perverse 1986 art-house shocker In a Glass Cage, which starred Gunter Meisner and Marisa Paredes, concerning a former Nazi doctor left paralyzed and confined within an iron lung after a suicide attempt. Circumstances allow him to insist that his wife hires a young boy to care for him rather than a nurse, and we learn that the good doctor is a pedophile that enjoys putting the fear of death into young men. Villaronga followed that up with 1987’s Moon Child, another strange and obscure film, starring Lisa Gerrard and featuring music from her famed group Dead Can Dance. On the art-house periphery generally due to queer themes and motifs, including with 2000’s The Sea, his last feature, 2010’s Black Bread, was ushered forth as the Best Foreign Language submission for...