Spanish cinema great Almodóvar plans his 1st film in America

Actor Antonio Banderas, left, and director/screenwriter Pedro Almodovar at the premiere of “Pain and Glory” during the 57th New York Film Festival in New York. (Invision/AP)

NEW YORK — Pedro Almodóvar is a master of cinema who has found international acclaim with 21 films he’s shot in his native Spain. Now he’s setting his sights on making his first film in North America.

Almodóvar said the film is set in Texas and would be mostly in English, with some bilingual scenes shot in Mexico.

The director said he has the story mapped out in a first draft of the script and while some work still needs to be done, he’s planning that it will be his next film. “I can’t say the title yet, but I can say it is based on five stories by an American female author and that it happens partly in Texas and partly in Mexico,” he told The Associated Press. “It would be the first time that I get out of Spain,” he said.

Almodóvar’s latest feature, “Pain and Glory,” was released Friday in the U.S.

The highly autobiographical drama stars Antonio Banderas as an aging film director who flirts with drugs and has to confront his own past while reflecting on his life and career. It has been hailed as one of his best movies in recent years and won Banderas the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival in May .

It is also Spain’s submission to the Oscars for best international feature film, the category formerly known as best foreign language film. If it wins, it would be exactly 20 years after Almodóvar’s “All About My Mother” received the award. (The filmmaker also won the best original screenplay Oscar in 2003 for “Talk To Her.”)

“This will force me to come a few times in the next months because (the distributor) Sony is making a big campaign — and this is something good — because they have a lot of faith in the movie. And also the first reactions it is getting are incredibly positive,” he said. But “this doesn’t mean anything other than there’s going to be a big campaign to be able to be among the five nominees. I will do everything possible, which will be to come, to cross the Pond as many times as they tell me, and the rest is a mystery.

“It’s a very long road and it’s not in my hands, but… I would love to be” back at the Oscars, he said.

He also hopes to see Banderas nominated, like his muse Penélope Cruz was in 2007 for her starring role in “Volver.” Cruz won an Oscar two years later for her supporting role in Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”.

“It makes me very happy to see Antonio among the first five (in many media pools,) and I hope it continues this way”, said Almodóvar. “Right now we can only speak about prospects, and the prospects are good. Reality will eventually place each of us wherever we belong.”