The American actor Ethan Hawke and the Chilean Pedro Pascal will be the protagonists of “Extraña forma de vida”, a 30-minute western that Pedro Almodóvar plans to shoot in the Spanish city of Almería (south), his production company El Deseo confirmed on Tuesday in a statement.
The cast also includes the Spaniards Pedro Casablanc and Sara Sálamo, along with the “young promises” Jason Fernández, the Portuguese José Condessa, the model George Steane and Manu Ríos.
The costume design will be carried out by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, who also enter as associate producers of the project.
“A very particular western”
Almodóvar spoke for the first time about this short film at the Venice Film Festival two years ago. Already then he announced that it would be “a very particular western” and announced the title, taken from a fado by Amália Rodrígues.
A first synopsis was also released today that talks about Silva, a rancher who crosses the desert that separates him from Bitter Creek on horseback to visit Sheriff Jake. Twenty-five years earlier, the two had worked together as hired guns.
“Silva comes under the pretext of reuniting with his friend from youth, and in fact they celebrate their meeting, but the next morning Sheriff Jake tells him that the reason for his trip is not the memory of their old friendship…”, adds the synopsis.
“I must not say more so as not to reveal all the surprises of the script,” Almodóvar points out in the statement, although he gives one more clue when referring to the lyrics of the aforementioned fado, which “suggests that there is no existence more strange than the one lived by behind your own wishes.”
in Almeria
The Spanish director plans to shoot part of the short film in the desert of Tabernas, in Almería, and in the town where Sergio Leone filmed fifty years ago to film his dollar trilogy with Clint Eastwood.
In an interview published on Tuesday by the American media ‘Indiewire’, it is detailed that the start of filming is scheduled for the end of August and that Hawke and Pascal will be in Spain at the beginning of July for rehearsals and tests.
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Almodóvar premiered his first work in English in 2020, the short ‘The human voice’ starring Tilda Swinton and his next feature film, the adaptation of several stories from ‘Manual for cleaning women’ by Lucía Berlin, starring Cate Blanchett, also it will be in english.
Production of the feature is scheduled for next year. In August 2020, in Venice, Almodóvar also revealed that, in addition to the western, he had written another short, a dystopia about the emptiness in movie theaters.