Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore attend Venice Film Festival with Almodóvar film

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar returns to the Venice Film Festival with stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, Monday. “The Room Next Door” will have its world premiere on the Lido in the evening.

Though a new Almodóvar film is always an event for cinephiles, this one has special significance: It’s his English-language debut.

“My insecurity disappeared after the first table read with the actresses, with the exchange of the first indications,” he wrote in his director’s statement. “The language wasn’t going to be a problem, and not because I master English, but because of the total disposition of the whole cast to understand me and to make it easy for me to understand them.”

Moore and Swinton play estranged friends, who met in their youths at a magazine job, and whose lives took different paths. Ingrid (Moore) wrote novels. Martha (Swinton) became a war reporter. And now after years apart, they meet again in a situation that’s described by studio Sony Pictures Classics as “extreme but strangely sweet.”

Almodóvar’s last Venice appearance was in 2021, where he presented the film “Parallel Mothers,” for which Penelope Cruz won its best actress prize. In 2019, Venice also gave him a lifetime achievement award. But his history with Venice stretches back 40 years.

“I was born as a film director in 1983 in Venice,” he said. A few years later, he’d return with the classic “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

Of his latest, he wrote “Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore carry the weight of the whole film on their shoulders, and they are a spectacle. I have been fortunate in that both give a veritable recital. At times during shooting, both the crew and I were on the verge of tears watching them. It was a very moving shoot and, in some way, blessed.”

The film is playing in competition at the 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival, alongside the likes of “Maria” and the yet-to-premiere “Queer” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.” Winners will be announced on Sept. 7.

Sony Pictures Classics will release “The Room Next Door” in theaters in December.

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