(San Sebastián) Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar said Thursday he was “moved to tears” when receiving the honorary prize at the San Sebastián Film Festival for his entire body of work, marked according to the organizers by a “ recognizable visual style” among all.
“Cinema has given me everything,” declared the 75-year-old director upon receiving this Donostia Prize, one of the highest distinctions of this festival organized since 1968 in the city of the Spanish Basque Country.
“For me, cinema is a blessing or a curse, I cannot imagine any other type of life than writing and filming tirelessly,” he added during a ceremony which took place in the presence of of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
The Donostia Prize is one of the rare distinctions that the director of All about my mother And Talk to herrewarded during his career with two Oscars, five Goyas, four Césars, the National Cinematography Prize of Spain, among others.
At the beginning of September, he also received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for his first English-language film, The room next doorthat he is presenting in San Sebastian a feature film on assisted suicide, with the actresses Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.
“I have had a career of 23 films, some better than others, and they are all mine and belong to me”, which is “a privilege”, declared Almodóvar, saying he was “moved to tears” during a press conference organized before the award ceremony.
“I never thought about the question of talent. I thought I had a calling […] and that if I couldn’t make films, I would be the unhappiest person in the universe,” added the director during the ceremony.
The organizers of the festival, which runs until Saturday September 28, indicated last summer that they wanted to give him this prize to salute the Spanish director’s “artistic talent” and “recognizable visual style”.
His work, launched in 1980 with Pepi, Luci, Bom and other neighborhood girlsstands out “for its writing of female characters”, “its direction of the actors” and its “audacity in the approach” to certain themes “like the LGTBIQ+ universe”, they explained.
Another honorary prize was awarded this year to the American-Australian actress Cate Blanchett, the other face of the official poster for this edition, for a career spanning “more than 30 years combining auteur cinema and films aimed at the general public.