The great directors also bet on short films

It is assumed that established filmmakers no longer shoot short films, that it is a format and an area reserved for young directors and directors to write their letters of introduction, to specify their first experiences. However, this column will only refute that statement: more and more directors with a long career are returning again and again to reduced footage, either because they want to experiment or simply because they consider that what they have to tell does not require the 90 or 120 minutes of so many feature films.

The case of Pedro Almodóvar is, in this sense, symptomatic: of the last three works he has presented since 2020, two are short: "The human voice", a reinterpretation of the work of Jean Cocteau with Tilda Swinton; and “Extraña forma de vida”, a queer western with Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke (in between he shot the feature film “Madres paralelas”). The famous Spanish director said that he wanted to test himself filming in English (both have a majority of the dialogues in that language), but he also felt that half an hour was enough for the stories he wanted to narrate (“The human voice” lasts 30 minutes and “Strange way of life” reaches 31).

Until not long ago there was a commercial impediment that conspired against the choice of the short by prestigious filmmakers, but with the current massiveness of streaming platforms there are no difficulties for its launch. Even French distributors took advantage of the existence of these two half-hour films to launch the diptych in theaters as a one-hour program in total, which they called with good marketing criteria the “Almodóvar Experience”.