As reported a few days ago, Pedro Almodovar’s “Strange Way of Life” will be opening the Cannes Film Festival.
As stated on 02.20.23, via Roger Friedman, France Inter’s Christine Masson had earlier confirmed that Almodovar’s 30-minute short would be the launchpad for the 76th edition of the festival in May.
Now, while guesting on the podcast Dua Lipa: At Your Service, Almodóvar is himself telling the musician that it’s the opener. It can’t get more official than that.
"The title is “Strange Way of Life”. It will release in May, it will open in Cannes Film Festival and then we have to wait until that moment," he said. "But of course it's a Western, it's about masculinity, but I don't want to classify it, but I don't know exactly what the people are going to say about the western. This is a queer western in the sense that there are two men, and they love each other, and they behave in that situation in an opposite way. It's about masculinity in that deep sense."
“Strange Way of Life” stars Ethan Hawke, Pedro Pascal and Manu Rios. It was shot last fall. Almodovar is also set to shoot his first full-length feature in English this fall in NYC.
I presume “Strange Way of Life” won’t be in competition, but there have been rumors that actually three short films will be the Cannes openers, with Godard’s “Scenario” being one of the others.
We’ll know much more when the lineup gets revealed during the third week of April.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.