Toronto (Canada), September 11 (EFE).- Pedro Almodóvar was honored by the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) for having “pushed the boundaries of cinema”, although he admits that he did not never done consciously and that the only thing he wanted was to tell stories: “Now I couldn’t live without making films,” he said in an interview with EFE.

The director of La Mancha, 73, admits that he is moved by the award given to him by TIFF, one of the Tribute prizes of the Canadian exhibition, which opened last Thursday and ends on the 17th.

“It’s really a recognition of greater words because what they reward is the influence of my cinema within the media and even the good influence within the society in which we live for the type of films that I realized, for the freedom of my characters,” he explains.

In his films, he remembers, “transsexuals, bisexuals, all kinds of sexual orientations appeared, and in a normal way, not treated as something problematic”, while all this was not at the fashion. He did it because these were the stories he wanted to tell, what his body “asked for.”

“I’m very happy if it also helped this society improve even slightly. I’m delighted. I feel very, very excited,” adds the winner of two Oscars, including best foreign film for “All About My Mother” in 1999 and another for best original screenplay for “Hable con ella” in 2002.

The Festival specifically highlighted the importance of Almodóvar’s work in “pushing the boundaries of cinema”, which it stressed was not premeditated.

“I wasn’t conscious of pushing the boundaries, or at least not consciously, but even now I’m not conscious of it. Every time I start a film, I think it’s the first one. I I don’t feel like, for example, saying, ‘Ah, well, I’ve made 22 films, I know how to make this one,'” he says.

“The word that defines cinema is uncertainty. Making a film is an enormous adventure which also has a very addictive character because, now, I could no longer live without making films. What I tried was not to don’t repeat myself,” he continues.

Almodóvar acknowledges that receiving this type of award makes him think about his career and work, something he normally doesn’t do, he says.

“These types of awards force you to think about your career and how it has evolved over nearly four decades. All the films are mine, but each film is different from the last, also different from the next. They form all the links that make up my filmography,” he says.

The director admits he “didn’t have the confidence at all” to direct “Brokeback Mountain” when it was offered to him twenty years ago, due to the language barrier. Today it’s different, after the filming of two short films in English, including “Strange Way of Life” with Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke, screened at TIFF.

Almodóvar is working on an English-language feature film project, set in New York. The director reveals some of his details, while emphasizing that he does not know if it will be released and that he also has another project in Spanish in his hands,

“If I make the next film in English, it’s not so much about American society. It’s an intimate film about two women who live in an extreme situation,” he explains.

She adds that she can’t do a version of “What Did I Do to Deserve This,” for example, because she can’t handle the cultural cues of an American housewife.

“But I know two human beings, in this case two women, who are experiencing a particular situation and what is happening to them in an area of ​​intimacy. Because that is also what I specialized in: in films with few characters. and where we talk a lot,” he says.

When asked what the Pedro Almodóvar of 2023 would say to the one of 1983, to whom he sang “I’m going to be a mother” with Fabio McNamara, to the Almodóvar of the Madrid scene, the director does not hesitate to answer.

“Congratulations for daring,” he replies with aplomb.

“I am very happy to have dared to do things like the songs I did with Fabio McNamara,” he concludes.

Julius Caesar Rivas