Pedro Almodóvar Celebrates ‘The Room Next Door’ and 44 Years of Filmmaking in San Sebastian: ‘Just an Enormous Amount of Emotion’

variety.com:

The Room Next Door,” Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar moved closer to home to the San Sebastian Film Festival — a festival very close to his heart — to celebrate both the film and his receiving of the event’s highest honor, the Donostia Award for career achievement.

Speaking at the press conference on Thursday, Almodovar said that his very first feature “Pepi, Luci, Bon” first premiered at San Sebastián in 1980 and that since arriving at the festival on Wednesday — which also happened to be his 74th birthday — he’d been overwhelmed with an “just an enormous amount of emotion” as he reflected on 44 years of filmmaking since then and the impact the festival had had on his career. “I couldn’t stop crying and had tears running down my cheeks,” he said. “It’s been much more emotional that I expected — almost excessively emotional.” Almodovar noted that “Pepi, Luci, Bon” — which attracted attention for its mix of melodrama, Movida modernity and a golden rain scene plus a fart-to-perfume commercial created by its protagonist, who works at an ad agency — was a “very defective film.” But he said it was also “the beginning” for him and a career that would go on to span some 23 features. “So when I arrived at the hotel yesterday, I realised that in these 44 years since, things had changed enormously, generally in the world but also in my life.

But this city continues to provoke very deep emotions in me 44 years later.” Almodovar claimed that he’d been recently asked by a journalist if he’d ever question his talent over the years. “But I never thought about my talent,” he said. “What I thought about what was that I have this vocation which is much more powerful than myself.