Pedro Almodóvar’s boundary-breaking Western will be released by Sony Pictures Classics.
Three weeks before its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Strange Way of Life, a boundary-breaking Western directed by noted Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar (Pain and Glory, Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), has been picked up for theatrical distribution by Sony Pictures Classics. A fall release has been tentatively set for the short drama, which co-stars Ethan Hawke (The Magnificent Seven, In a Valley of Violence) and Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian, The Last of Us), and was filmed on location in southern Spain.
Almodóvar described the drama in his official 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.”
“I must say no more so as not to give away all the surprises of the script,” Almodóvar added. “The strange way of life referred in the title alludes to the famous fado by Amalia Rodrigues, whose lyrics suggest that there is no stranger existence than the one that is lived by turning your back on your own desires.”
Strange Way of Life is Almodóvar’s second English-language production, after The Human Voice, a 2020 short film starring Tilda Swinton and based on the play by Jean Cocteau.
Here is the Sony Pictures Classics trailer for Strange Way of Life.
