Indie Wire reports that as the Cannes Film Festival wraps up and Venice is ahead, new film directed by Pedro Almodóvar is just around the corner. The Spanish Oscar-winning filmmaker’s latest is titled Parallel Mothers, which is set to open the Biennale on September 1. Almodóvar also wrote the film and it stars Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, plus Julieta Serrano and Rossy De Palma.
A statement was given to Indie Wire by Almodóvar, saying that “I was born as a film director in 1983 in Venice in the Mezzogiorno Mezzanotte section. Thirty-eight years later I am called to open the festival. I cannot explain the joy and the honor, and how much this means to me without falling into complacency. I am very grateful to the festival for this recognition and hope to be up to it.”
The festival also wrote a synopsis of the film: “Two women, Janis and Ana, coincide in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. Both are single and got pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, doesn’t regret it and she is exultant. The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared, repentant, and traumatized. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which chance will undertake to develop and complicate in such a decisive way that it will change the lives of both.”
Parallel Mothers is Almodóvar’s first feature since Pain and Glory, in which Antonio Banderas won the Best Actor prize at Cannes and earned the film Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best International Feature Film. Parallel Mothers will screen Wednesday, September 1 in the Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema. Sony Pictures Classics will release the film later on stateside.
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