Pedro Almodóvar
The great director of post-Franco Spain fills his films with passionate women, gay desire and trans heroines.
Pedro Almodóvar grew up in a poor village in La Mancha and was educated by priests. At 17 he moved to Madrid against his parents’ wishes. Under the Franco dictatorship the national film school was closed, so he taught himself filmmaking with a Super-8 camera while working for the telephone company.
After Franco’s death he became a central figure of the Movida Madrileña, the explosion of art, music and sexual freedom in 1980s Madrid. His early films were wild, provocative and funny. In 1986 he founded the production company El Deseo with his brother Agustín. “Law of Desire” (1987), about a gay filmmaker and his trans sister, was one of the most open queer films of its time.
International success came with “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (1988). “All About My Mother” (1999), with trans and gay characters at its heart, won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, and “Talk to Her” (2002) the Oscar for best original screenplay. In “Bad Education” (2004) and “Pain and Glory” (2019) he drew on his own life.
Almodóvar is openly gay. In 2024 his first English-language feature, “The Room Next Door”, won the Golden Lion in Venice.