Julieta lives in Madrid with her daughter Antía. They both suffer in silence over the loss of Xoan, Antía’s father and Julieta’s husband. But at times grief doesn’t bring people closer, it drives them apart.

When Antía turns eighteen she abandons her mother, without a word of explanation. Julieta looks for her in every possible way, but all she discovers is how little she knows of her daughter.

JULIETA is about the mother’s struggle to survive uncertainty. It also about fate, about guilt complexes and about that unfathomable mystery that leads us to abandon the people we love, erasing them from our lives as if they had never meant anything, as if they had never existed.

Pedro Almodóvar

Writer, Director

JULIETA is Pedro Almodvar’s 20th full-length feature film as Director, being released in 2016, which is the 30th anniversary year of his production company with his brother Agustín, El Deseo S.A..

Pedro was born in Calzada de Calatrava, province of Ciudad Real, in the heart of La Mancha, in the 50s. When he was eight, he emigrated with his family to Estremadura. There he studied for his elementary and high school diplomas respectively with the Salesian Fathers and the Franciscans. At seventeen, he left home and moved to Madrid, with no money and no job, but with a very specific project in mind: to study cinema and direct films. It was impossible to enroll in the Official Film School because Franco had just closed it. Despite the dictatorship that was suffocating the country, for an adolescent from the provinces Madrid represented culture, independence and freedom.

He worked at many, sporadic jobs but couldn’t buy his first Super-8mm camera until he got a “serious” job at the National Telephone Company of Spain in 1971. He worked there for twelve years as an administrative assistant, sharing this job in the mornings with other multiple activities which provided his real training as a filmmaker and as a person. In the mornings, at the Telephone Company, he got an in-depth knowledge of the Spanish middle class at the start of the consumer era, the seventies, its dramas and its misfortunes, a real gold mine for a future storyteller. In the evenings and nights, he wrote, loved, acted with the mythical independent theatre group Los Goliardos and made films in Super-8 (his only school as a filmmaker). He collaborated with various underground magazines and wrote stories, some of which were published. He was a member of a parodic punk-rock group, Almodóvar and McNamara, etc. And he had the good fortune that his personal explosion coincided with the explosion of the democratic Madrid of the last seventies, early eighties. That was the period the world knew as La Movida.

His films are the heirs and witnesses of the brand new born Spanish democracy. After a year and a half of eventful shooting on 16mm, in 1980 he opened PEPI, LUCI, BOM, a no-budget film made as a cooperative effort with the rest of the crew and the cast, all beginners, except for Carmen Maura. In 1986, he founded the production company El Deseo S.A. with his brother Agustín. Their first project was LAW OF DESIRE. Since then, over the past 30 years, they have produced all the films that Pedro has written and directed, and have also produced other young directors. In 1988, WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN brought him international recognition. Since then, his films have opened all around the world. With ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER he won his first Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, and also the Golden Globe, the César, 3 European Film Awards, the David de Donatello, 2 BAFTAs, 7 Goyas and 45 other awards. Three years later, TALK TO HER had the same or better fortune (Academy Award for Best Script, 5 European Film Awards, 2 BAFTAs, the Nastro de Argento, the César and many other awards throughout the world but not in Spain). He produced four very special films, highly rated throughout the world for their valor and delicacy (MY LIFE WITHOUT ME, THE HOLY GIRL, THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS and THE HEADLESS WOMAN, by Isabel Coixet and Lucrecia Martel alternatively).

In 2004, BAD EDUCATION was chosen to open the Cannes Festival. It received extraordinary reviews throughout the world. It was nominated for numerous awards (Independent Spirit Awards, BAFTAs, César, European Film Awards) and won the prestigious Award for Best Foreign Film given by the New York Critics’ Circle and also the Nastro de Argento. In 2006 he was awarded with the Prince of Asturias Award to the Arts. That very same year he presented VOLVER in competition in the Cannes Film Festival, where it got the Best Screenplay Award as well as the Best Actress Award for the six actresses of the film, led by Penélope Cruz. The film received 5 EFA awards, 5 Goya awards, the Fipresci award, the National Board of Review, and many others (up to 72). Penélope was nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award, which was the first time a Spanish actress was nominated for a Spanish speaking film. Up to now, VOLVER has been his most popular film in terms of box office.

In 2009, BROKEN EMBRACES starring Penelope Cruz and Lluis Homar was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe as well as the Best Film Not in the English Language BAFTA. In 2011, THE SKIN I LIVE In starring Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya and Jan Cornet won the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe Award as well as multiple Goya Awards in Spain. In 2013, he returned to comedy with “I’m So Excited”, starring Javier Cámara, Hugo Silva, Antonio de la Torre, and Miguel Ángel Silvestre. In 2014, he produced the Argentinean film WILD TALES, which was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award, and won the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language, as well as multiple awards and prizes around the world.

He was awarded the Doctor of Letters, honoris causa from Oxford University in 2016, and his work and the Spanish Cinema that inspired him is the subject of a retrospective organized by the British Film Institute, running from August through October 2016. He was previously awarded an Honorary Degree from Harvard University in 2009; SAG's Jean Renoir Award for International Screenwriting Achievement in 2015; and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Alice Munro

Author of the Stories Chance, Soon, and Silence

Alice Munro grew up in Wingham, Ontario, and attended the University of Western Ontario. She has published thirteen collections of stories and a novel. During her distinguished career she has been the recipient of many awards, including two Giller Prizes, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Man Booker International Prize. In 2013 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, The Paris Review, Granta, and many other publications, and her collections have been translated into thirteen languages. Her story “The Bear Came Over The Mountain" was filmed by Sarah Polley as AWAY FROM HER (2006), and "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" as HATESHIP LOVESHIP (2013). Munro lives in Port Hope, Canada, on Lake Ontario.

Agustín Almodóvar

Executive Producer

Born in La Mancha, he graduated in Chemical Sciences from Madrid’s Complutense University.

Since 1985 he has worked actively in cinema. He joined the crew of SÉ INFIEL Y NO MIRES CON QUIEN (Fernando Trueba) as production trainee. That same year he began his ceaseless participation in his brother’s films, working as assistant director on MATADOR and in 1986 he and Pedro set up their own company, El Deseo. This year, 2016, marks the 30th anniversary of the company.

Since then he has produced all of Pedro’s feature films (winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film with ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER) and has also produced the work of other directors (Alex de la Iglesia, Mónica Laguna, Daniel Calparsoro, Guillermo del Toro, Isabel Coixet, Félix Sabroso and Dunia Ayaso, Lucrecia Martel, Belén Macías and Damian Szifron). With El Deseo, he has also been involved in numerous coproductions with France.

Esther García

Producer

Esther, who was born in Segovia, has won five GOYAS FOR ACCIÓN MUTANTE, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS and VOLVER. She has been production director on over ninety films and TV series since she began in 1976 with “Curro Jiménez”.

She has worked in every aspect of production from trainee to executive producer, a position she has held since the film MY LIFE WITHOUT ME (Isabel Coixet), including on the recent Argentinean hit WILD TALES.

As well as working uninterruptedly with Pedro since MATADOR, she has done production work for Fernando Trueba, Mariano Ozores, Luis María Delgado, Gonzalo Suárez, Emilio Martínez Lázaro, Fernando Colomo and Damian Szifron.

As part of the El Deseo team, she has directed production on ACCIÓN MUTANTE (Alex de la Iglesia), TENGO UNA CASA (Mónica Laguna), “Pasajes” (Daniel Calparsoro), THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE (Guillermo del Toro), CHILL OUT! (Félix Sabroso and Dunia Ayaso) and MY PRISON YARD (Belen Macías).

Along with Agustín Almodóvar, she has gone into television production (“Mujeres”, by Dunia Ayaso and Félix Sabroso) and international production (MY LIFE WITHOUT ME and THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS, by Isabel Coixet, THE HOLY GIRL and THE HEADLESS WOMAN, by Lucrecia Martel).

Alberto Iglesias

Composer

Born in San Sebastian in 1955, he studied piano, guitar, counterpoint and harmony with Blanca Burgaleta and Francisco Escudero in his home city. He broadened his studies in Paris with Francis Schwartz and in Barcelona with Gabriel BrnÇic. He has collaborated with Carlos Saura, Bigas Luna, Julio Medem and Iciar Bollaín, among others in Spain.

He has developed a close collaboration with Pedro since they first worked together on THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET, and since then he has been the regular composer on his films.

His soundtracks include LOS AMANTES DEL CÍRCULO POLAR (Julio Medem), THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET, LIVE FLESH, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, TALK TO HER, VOLVER, BROKEN EMBRACES, THE SKIN I LIVE IN, and I’M SO EXCITED (Pedro Almodóvar), CHE (Steven Soderbergh). He has received ten Goya Awards for his work on the above mentioned films and also for his scores for Julio Medem’s films LA ARDILLA ROJA, TIERRA and SEX AND LUCIA. He won the European Film Award (EFA) for VOLVER.

He was nominated for the Oscar and the BAFTA for THE CONSTANT GARDENER (Fernando Meirelles), THE KITE RUNNER (Marc Foster) and TINKER, TAILOR SOLDIER, SPY (Tomas Alfredson). He won the National Cinema Award in 2007. In addition to his film work, he has composed symphonic and chamber music and also several ballets for the National Dance Company in Spain.