Ukrainian homes and Ukrainian lives are lost daily. There is ten-ton sorrow weighing on the world, and the world is doing its best to push back on Putin’s arrogance. On March 1st, in President Biden’s State of the Union speech, he announced the freezing of Russian bank accounts on a global scale, closing off U.S. airspace to Russian flights, and plans to seize the properties of Russian oligarchs, following the statement with a menacing, ominous riff over the applause: “[Putin] has no idea what's coming.”

To fancy a filmmaker is to fancy his shoes, his eyes, his legs, the way he drools when he sleeps, and the drugs he does. Pedro Mercedes Almodóvar Caballero, known on the screen simply as “Almodóvar,” fancies himself. Each film he writes is glazed with his life’s sticky resin, polished and bruised in tandem. Such eccentric sincerity is a phenomenon built over time, and understanding Almodóvar’s journey helps us understand what informs his filmmaking.