Pedro Almodóvar Caballero (; born 25 September 1949) is a Spanish film director, screenwriter and author. His films are distinguished by melodrama, irreverent humour, bold colour, glossy décor, quotations from popular culture, and complex narratives. Desire, LGBTQ issues, passion, family, motherhood, and identity are among Almodóvar's most frequently explored subjects. As one of the most internationally successful Spanish filmmakers, Almodóvar and his films have developed a cult following.
Almodóvar's career developed during La Movida Madrileña, a cultural renaissance that followed the end of Francoist Spain. His early films characterised the sense of sexual and political freedom of the period. In 1986, he established his own film production company, El Deseo, with his younger brother Agustín Almodóvar, who has been responsible for producing all of his films since Law of Desire (1987). His breakthrough film was Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
He achieved further success often collaborating with actors Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz. He directed Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989), High Heels (1991), and Live Flesh (1997). Almodóvar's next two films, All About My Mother (1999) and Talk to Her (2002), earned him an Academy Award each, for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay, respectively. His later films Volver (2006), Broken Embraces (2009), The Skin I Live In (2011), Julieta (2016), Pain and Glory (2019), and Parallel Mothers (2021) were also praised. He is also known for directing several short films including The Human Voice (2020) and Strange Way of Life (2023). He made his first English-language feature film with The Room Next Door (2024), which won the Golden Lion at the 81st Venice International Film Festival.
Almodóvar has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, two Emmy Awards, five BAFTA Awards, and five Goya Awards. He received the French Legion of Honour in 1997, the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts in 1999, the European Film Academy Achievement in World Cinema Award in 2013, and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2019. He has also received honorary doctoral degrees from Harvard University, in 2009 and from the University of Oxford in 2016.
Early life Pedro Almodóvar Caballero was born on 25 September 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, a small rural town of the Province of Ciudad Real in Spain. He has two older sisters, Antonia and María Jesús, and one brother Agustín. His father, Antonio Almodóvar (d. 1980), was a winemaker, and his mother, Francisca Caballero (1916–1999), was a letter reader and transcriber for illiterate neighbours.
When Almodóvar was eight years old, the family sent him to study at a religious boarding school in the city of Cáceres, Extremadura, in western Spain, with the hope that he might someday become a priest. His family eventually joined him in Cáceres, where his father opened a gas station and his mother opened a bodega in which she sold her own wine.D'Lugo, Pedro Almodóvar, p. 13. Unlike Calzada, there was a cinema in Cáceres.Allison, A Spanish Labyrinth, p. 7. "Cinema became my real education, much more than the one I received from the priest", he said later in an interview.D'Lugo, Pedro Almodóvar, p. 14. Almodóvar was influenced by Luis Buñuel.
Against his parents' wishes, Almodóvar moved to Madrid in 1967 to become a filmmaker. When the Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, closed the National School of Cinema in Madrid, Almodóvar became self-taught. To support himself, Almodóvar had a number of jobs, including selling used items in the famous Madrid flea market El Rastro and as an administrative assistant with the Spanish phone company Telefónica, where he worked for 12 years.
Career 1974–1979: Early work and short films In the early 1970s, Almodóvar became interested in experimental cinema and theatre. He collaborated with the vanguard theatrical group Los Goliardos, in which he played his first professional roles and met actress Carmen Maura. Madrid's flourishing alternative cultural scene became the perfect scenario for Almodóvar's social talents. He was a crucial figure in La Movida Madrileña (the Madrilenian Movement), a cultural renaissance that followed the death of Francisco Franco in 1975. Alongside Fabio McNamara, Almodóvar sang in a glam rock parody duo.
Almodóvar also wrote various articles for major newspapers and magazines, such as El País, Diario 16 and La Luna, as well as contributing to comic strips, articles and stories in counterculture magazines, such as Star, El Víbora and Vibraciones. He published a novella, Fuego en las entrañas (Fire in the Guts), and kept writing stories that were eventually published in a compilation volume entitled El sueño de la razón (The Dream of Reason).
Almodóvar bought his first camera, a Super-8, with his first paycheck from Telefónica when he was 22 years old and began to make hand-held short films.
Around 1974, he made his first short film, and by the end of the 1970s they were shown in Madrid's night circuit and in Barcelona. These shorts had overtly sexual narratives and no soundtrack: Dos putas, o, Historia de amor que termina en boda (Two Whores, or, A Love Story that Ends in Marriage) in 1974; La caída de Sodoma (The Fall of Sodom) in 1975; Homenaje (Homage) in 1976; La estrella (The Star) in 1977; Sexo Va: Sexo viene (Sex Comes and Goes); and Complementos (Shorts) in 1978, his first film in 16mm.Edwards, Almodóvar: Labyrinth of Passion, p. 12.
He remembers, "I showed them in bars, at parties... I could not add a soundtrack because it was very difficult. The magnetic strip was very poor, very thin. I remember that I became very famous in Madrid because, as the films had no sound, I took a cassette with music while I personally did the voices of all the characters, songs and dialogues".Almodóvar Secreto: Cobos and Marias, pp. 76–78. After four years of working with shorts in Super-8 format, Almodóvar made his first full-length film Folle, folle, fólleme, Tim (Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Fuck Me, Tim) in Super-8 in 1978, followed by his first 16 mm short Salomé.Allison, A Spanish Labyrinth, p. 9.
1980–1987: Rise to prominence Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap (1980)
Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap is a 1980 Spanish comedy film and Almodóvar's debut feature. The story follows the chaotic adventures of three unique women living in post-Franco Madrid. The film is a major symbol of the Movida Madrileña, a countercultural movement celebrating newfound personal freedom. Due to its raw underground style, this low-budget project became a cult classic and launched Almodóvar's career.
Labyrinth of Passion (1982)
His second feature Labyrinth of Passion (1982) focuses on nymphomaniac pop star, Sexila (Cecilia Roth), who falls in love with a gay middle-eastern prince, Riza Niro (Imanol Arias). Their unlikely destiny is to find one another, overcome their sexual preferences, and live happily ever after on a tropical island. Framed in Madrid during La Movida Madrileña, between the dissolution of Franco's authoritarian regime and the onset of AIDS consciousness, Labyrinth of Passion caught the spirit of liberation in Madrid and it became a cult film.Strauss, Almodóvar on Almodóvar, p. 28.
The film marked Almodóvar's first collaboration with cinematographer Ángel Luis Fernandez as well as the first of several collaborations with actor Antonio Banderas. Labyrinth of Passion premiered at the 1982 San Sebastian Film Festival. While the film received better reviews than its predecessor, Almodóvar later acknowledged: "I like the film even if it could have been better made. The main problem is that the story of the two leads is much less interesting than the stories of all the secondary characters. But precisely because there are so many secondary characters, there's a lot in the film I like". Dark Habits (1983)
For his next film Dark Habits (1983), Almodóvar was approached by multi-millionaire Hervé Hachuel, who wanted to start a production company to make films starring his girlfriend, Cristina Sánchez Pascual. Hachuel set up Tesuaro Production and asked Almodóvar to keep Pascual in mind. Almodóvar had already written the script for Dark Habits and made changes to the script so his supporting cast were more prominent in the story.
The film heralded a change in tone to somber melodrama with comic elements. Pascual stars as Yolanda, a cabaret singer who seeks refuge in a convent of eccentric nuns, each of whom explores a different sin. This film has an almost all-female cast including Carmen Maura, Julieta Serrano, Marisa Paredes and Chus Lampreave, actresses who Almodóvar would cast again in later films. This is Almodóvar's first film in which he used popular music to express emotion: in a pivotal scene, the mother superior and her protégé sing along with Lucho Gatica's bolero "Encadenados".
Dark Habits premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was surrounded in controversy due its subject matter. Despite religious critics being offended by the film, it went on to become a modest critical and commercial success, establishing Almodóvar's reputation as the enfant terrible of Spanish cinema.
What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984)
Carmen Maura stars in What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Almodóvar's fourth film, as Gloria, an unhappy housewife who lives with her ungrateful husband Antonio (Ángel de Andrés López), her mother-in-law (Chus Lampreave), and her two teenage sons. Verónica Forqué appears as her prostitute neighbor and confidante.
Almodóvar has described his fourth film as an homage to Italian neorealism, although this tribute also involves jokes about paedophilia, prostitution, and a telekinetic child. The film, set in the tower blocks around Madrid in post-Franco Spain, depicts female frustration and family breakdown, echoing Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her and strong story plots from Roald Dahl's Lamb to the Slaughter and Truman Capote's A Day's Work, but with Almodóvar's unique approach to film making.
Matador (1986)
Almodóvar's growing success caught the attention of emerging Spanish film producer Andrés Vicente Gómez, who wanted to join forces to make his next film Matador (1986). The film centres on the relationship between a former bullfighter and a murderous female lawyer, who both find sexual fulfillment through acts of murder.
Written together with Spanish novelist Jesús Ferrero, Matador moved away from the naturalism and humour of the director's previous work into a deeper and darker terrain. Almodóvar cast several of his regulars actors in key roles: Antonio Banderas was hired for the role of Ángel, a bullfighting student who, after an attempted rape incident, falsely confesses to a series of murders that he did not commit; Julieta Serrano appears as Ángel's very religious mother; while Carmen Maura, Chus Lampreave, Verónica Forqué and Eusebio Poncela also appear in minor roles. Newcomers Nacho Martínez and Assumpta Serna, had major roles, with Martinez as the retired bullfighter who teaches Ángel and with Serna as Ángel's attorney. Matador also marked the first time Almodóvar included a notable cinematic reference, using King Vidor's 1946 Duel in the Sun in one scene.
The film premiered in 1986 and drew some controversy due to its subject matter.