Pedro Almodóvar’s Short Film, STRANGE WAY OF LIFE, Starring Ethan Hawke And Pedro Pascal, Will Premiere At The 2023 Cannes Film Festival

By Michelle McCue | May 16, 2023

Sony Pictures Classics announced that they have acquired worldwide rights (excluding the UK, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and Latin America) to Pedro Almodóvar’s short film, STRANGE WAY OF LIFE, starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal.

The film will be screened in the Official Selection and in world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, along with the director and the two main actors. Shot in the south of Spain, this short film is the second experience of the filmmaker in English, after La Voix Humaine made in 2020. Sony Pictures Classics picked up the short in pre-production and will release it this fall.

STRANGE WAY OF LIFE follows two gunmen who reunite after 25 years. Almodóvar describes the film in his director’s statement: “A man rides a horse across the desert that separates him from Bitter Creek. He comes to visit Sheriff Jake. Twenty-five years earlier, both the sheriff and Silva, the rancher who rides out to meet him, worked together as hired gunmen. Silva visits him with the excuse of reuniting with his friend from his youth, and they do indeed celebrate their meeting, but the next morning Sheriff Jake tells him that the reason for his trip is not to go down the memory lane of their old friendship…”

“There are westerns with gay characters, like Warlock by Edward Dmytryk. The script abounds in
data about the passionate relationship between its two protagonists, Anthony Quinn and Henry
Fonda, but no one talks about it even though their relationship is one of the axes of the film. This
turns Dmytryk’s film into a strange western or one with a badly written script. The film is only
understood if both of them are lovers, but that word is never mentioned. Although I’m a great admirer of the genre, I never thought that I’d end up making a western.”

Produced by Almodóvar’s El Deseo and presented by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, STRANGE WAY OF LIFE also stars Pedro Casablanc, Manu Ríos, George Steane, José Condessa, Jason Fernández and Sara Sálamo. It is produced by Agustín Almodóvar, with Esther García as executive producer and Bárbara Peiró, Diego Pajuelo, and Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello as associate producers.

The score is composed by four-time Academy Award® nominee Alberto Iglesias, a regular Almodóvar collaborator who received his most recent Oscar nomination in 2022 for Almodóvar’s PARALLEL MOTHERS. All characters are costumed by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello.

This acquisition is the latest in a long relationship between Almodóvar and Sony Pictures Classics. Most recently, the distributor released Almodóvar’s short film THE HUMAN VOICE and PARALLEL MOTHERS. The latter earned two Oscar nominations, Best Original Score for Iglesias and Best Actress for Penélope Cruz.