{"id":458539,"date":"2026-05-20T15:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T15:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/458539\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T15:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T15:04:11","slug":"pedro-almodovar-slams-trump-wears-free-palestine-pin-in-cannes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/458539\/","title":{"rendered":"Pedro Almodovar Slams Trump, Wears Free Palestine Pin in Cannes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPedro Almod\u00f3var declared at the Cannes press conference for his new movie, \u201cBitter Christmas,\u201d that \u201cEurope must never be subjected to Trump,\u201d which earned a rousing applause from the international press in attendance. The director was responding to a question about censorship concerns given what\u2019s going on in the U.S. under Trump and in France with controversy surrounding<\/a> Canal+, whose head threatened a blacklist against artists who signed an open letter opposing the company\u2019s main shareholder.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis does affect us a lot,\u201d Almod\u00f3var said of censorship concerns before urging artists not to succumb to such fears.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t want to judge anyone, but I think artists have to speak out about the situation in which they live in contemporary society. It\u2019s a moral duty,\u201d the director said. \u201cSilence and fear is a symptom that things are going badly. It\u2019s a serious sign democracy is crumbling. On the contrary, creators must speak out\u2026 the worst thing that could happen would be to remain silent or to be censored. We have a moral obligation to speak out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlmod\u00f3var urged his fellow artists \u201cto act as a shield against this madness.\u201d Ahead of the festival, the director called out the\u00a0Oscars<\/a>\u00a0for being blatantly apolitical this year.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou know, I\u2019m not really blaming anyone in particular, but it was quite notable watching\u00a0the Oscar telecast\u00a0where there were not many protests against the war or against Trump,\u201d Almod\u00f3var observed to Los Angeles Times<\/a>. \u201cMaybe he wasn\u2019t the only one, but the only real example I can remember came from a European, a friend of mine, Javier Bardem, who did directly say, \u2018Free Palestine.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPeople are obviously very frightened,\u201d the director continued. \u201cThe U.S. is not a democracy right now. Some people say it\u2019s maybe an imperfect democracy, but I really don\u2019t think the U.S. is a democracy right now. The heartbreaking and ironic thing is that democracy has given rise, through the proper, right voting mechanism, to this kind of totalitarian regime. And it\u2019s both a paradox and it\u2019s also incredibly sad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlmod\u00f3var is no stranger to publicly bashing Trump. Back in 2025 while receiving the Chaplin Award at Lincoln Center in New York City, he referred to the U.S. president by saying America was \u201cruled by a narcissistic authority, who doesn\u2019t respect human rights.\u201d He later said Trump would be remembered as a \u201ccatastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen asked by the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/a>\u00a0if he fears what speaking out could do to his career, Almod\u00f3var answered, \u201cNot at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t have many fears. In a generalized Spanish sense, here we\u2019re not afraid to call things for what they are. We have a government that has called Gaza a genocide and the Spanish people in general are not afraid to call these wars out for what they are,\u201d he explained, adding that \u201cit\u2019s easier for me to be clear\u201d with his beliefs because he\u2019s a foreigner and works outside of Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlmod\u00f3var\u2019s latest, \u201cBitter Christmas,\u201d premiered to a 6.5-minute standing ovation<\/a> in Cannes and is his eighth film in competition at Cannes. \u201cAll About My Mother\u201d won him the best director prize in 1999, while \u201cVolver\u201d earned him the best screenplay award in 2006.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pedro Almod\u00f3var declared at the Cannes press conference for his new movie, \u201cBitter Christmas,\u201d that \u201cEurope must never…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[10532,321,93,61,60,198333],"class_list":["post-458539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-pedro-almodovar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}