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Spain’s Almodovar to win life award at Venice Film Festival

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar will receive a Golden Lion lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival this year, the organisers said on Friday.

Published: 15 June 2019 07:38 CEST

Spain's Almodovar to win life award at Venice Film Festival

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar at a photo call during the Cannes Film Festival in May. Photo: Loic Venance / AFP

They called the 69-year-old filmmaker the “greatest and most influential Spanish director” since Luis Bunuel last century.

Almodovar “has offered us the most multifaceted, controversial, and provocative portraits of post-Franco Spain,” festival director Alberto Barbera said in a press release.

“The topics of transgression, desire, and identity are the terrain of choice for his films, which he imbues with corrosive humour and adorns with a visual splendour.”

Almodovar has directed 21 feature films, including “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”, “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!”, “High Heels” and “All About My Mother”.

He said in a statement he was “excited and honoured” by the prize. “This Lion is going to become my pet, along with the two cats I live with.”

The filmmaker, screenwriter and producer won an Oscar for best foreign film with “All About My Mother” in 2000.

He won the best screenplay award for “Volver” at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006 and the Venice festival's best screenplay award for “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” in 1988.

This year he was back at Cannes, where he presented his 21st film, “Pain and Glory” with Antonio Banderas.

Banderas received the festival's best actor award for his role as a filmmaker in crisis. The Venice International Film Festival runs from 27 August to 7 September.

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A cruise ship in St Mark's Basin, Venice.

The decision to limit cruise ship access to the Venice lagoon has come at a cost. Photo: Miguel Medina/AFP

The new rules, which took effect in August, followed years of warnings that the giant floating hotels risked causing irreparable damage to the lagoon city, a UNESCO world heritage site.

READ ALSO: Venice bans large cruise ships from centre after Unesco threat of ‘endangered’ status

Some 30 million euros has been allocated for 2021 for shipping companies who incurred costs in “rescheduling routes and refunding passengers who cancelled trips”, the infrastructure ministry said in a statement.

A further 27.5 million euros – five million this year and the rest in 2022 – was allocated for the terminal operator and related companies, it said.

The decision to ban large cruise ships from the centre of Venice in July came just days before a meeting of the UN’s cultural organisation Unesco, which had proposed adding Venice to a list of endangered heritage sites over inaction on cruise ships.

READ ALSO: Is Venice really banning cruise ships from its lagoon?

Under the government’s plan, cruise ships will not be banned from Venice altogether but the biggest vessels will no longer be able to pass through St Mark’s Basin, St Mark’s Canal or the Giudecca Canal. Instead, they’ll be diverted to the industrial port at Marghera.

But critics of the plan point out that Marghera – which is on the mainland, as opposed to the passenger terminal located in the islands – is still within the Venice lagoon.

Some aspects of the plan remain unclear, as infrastructure at Marghera is still being built. Meanwhile, smaller cruise liners are still allowed through St Mark’s and the Giudecca canals.

Cruise ships provide a huge economic boost to Venice, but activists and residents say the ships contribute to problems caused by ‘overtourism’ and cause large waves that undermine the city’s foundations and harm the fragile ecosystem of its lagoon.

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