May 20, 2026, 5:29 p.mMay 20, 2026, 5:29 p.m
The Spanish star director Pedro Almodóvar (“The Room Next Door”) sees Europeans as having a duty to form a protective shield against politicians like Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin.
“We are obliged, especially as Europeans, to become a kind of shield against these monsters like Trump, Netanyahu or the Russians,” he said at the Cannes Film Festival.
Pedro Almodóvar at the Cannes Film Festival.Image: keystone
They are obliged to do so because international law is respected here. There is a limit to all of Trump’s “madness,” he explained. “Europe must never submit to Trump,” said the 76-year-old director, who wore a pin that read “Free Palestine.” A few days earlier, Spanish Hollywood star Javier Bardem had criticized what he saw as the “toxic masculinity” of the three rulers in Cannes.
“Moral duty” to speak out
Almodóvar said it also seemed to him to be a “moral duty” for artists to speak out about social problems. Although he doesn’t condemn anyone who doesn’t speak out, silence and fear are a bad sign that democracy is crumbling.
In Cannes, Almodóvar presented his film “Bitter Christmas,” which is in the running for the Palme d’Or. The tragicomedy links the story of a filmmaker in crisis with that of an advertising director who later turns out to be a character in his script. The film consciously plays with two plot levels and two timelines and the question of the extent to which reality can influence fiction.
Almodóvar is Spain’s internationally best-known director. His film “All About My Mother” won an Oscar in 2000. He received another Oscar in 2003 for “Talk to Her.” (hkl/sda/dpa)