Star director: Almodóvar receives honorary award from the San Sebastián Film Festival

Spanish star director Pedro Almodóvar will be awarded the “Donostia” honorary prize at this year’s San Sebastián Film Festival. The 74-year-old will receive the award in the northern Spanish city on September 26 before the screening of his first English-language film, “The Room Next Door,” the festival’s organizers announced. Briton Tilda Swinton, who plays one of the main roles in the film alongside Julianne Moore and John Turturro, will present the award.

Almodóvar and his films (including “All About My Mother”, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”, “Volver”) have won awards including the Oscar, the Golden Lion, the European Film Award and, in his native Spain, the Goya and the Prince of Asturias Award. The man from the small village of Calzada de Calatrava in the province of Ciudad Real also works as a screenwriter, producer and writer.

The “Donostia” will be awarded twice this year. In addition to Almodóvar, Hollywood star Cate Blanchett (55, “Blue Jasmine”, “Tár”) will also receive it, as was announced in May. The two-time Oscar winner from Australia has already confirmed her participation in the 72nd edition of the festival from September 20 to 28.

The “Festival Internacional de Cine de San Sebastián” is the most important film festival in Spain. Greats of the film business such as Alfred Hitchcock, Bette Davis and Lana Turner have been guests in the picturesque city on the Atlantic. The main prize, the “Golden Shell”, is named after the shape of the bay on which the Basque metropolis is located.