With the Cannes Film Festival now in the rear view mirror, the next major international fest has announced its opening night film. The 78th Venice Film Festival, which kicks off Sept. 1, will launch with Pedro Almodóvar’s Madres Paralelas.
The film, which follows two women who cross paths when they are in labor in the same hospital, stars Almodóvar’s frequent collaborator Penélope Cruz, along with Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón.
Almodóvar’s relationship with the glitzy Italian fest stretches back 38 years, to when he screened Entre Tinieblas at the festival. In 2019, he was honored with a Golden Lion lifetime achievement award.
“I was born as a film director in 1983 in Venice in the Mezzogiorno Mezzanotte section,” said Almodóvar in a statement. “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 prolific Spanish director won his first Oscar for best foreign language film with 1999’s All About My Mother. Three years later, he won a screenplay Oscar for Talk to Her. His 2006 film Volver earned Cruz an Academy Award nomination, making her the first Spanish woman ever nominated in the category.
The Venice festival’s opening films are often star-studded projects, but not always Oscar hopefuls. The openers from the past two years (2020’s The Ties and 2019’s The Truth) didn’t go on to become contenders, but 2018’s First Man, 2017’s Downsizing, and 2016’s La La Land all used the festival to jump-start successful awards campaigns. We’ll see if Madres Paralelas can use its Lido launch to land Almodóvar Oscar attention once again.
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