Pedro Almodóvar Teases His Gay Western With Ethan Hawke & Pedro Pascal

Director Pedro Almodóvar teased his upcoming queer cowboy film Strange Way of Life, starring Pedro Pascal, Ethan Hawke, and Elite’s Manu Ríos — and we are ready to saddle up.

The All About My Mother director stopped by Dua Lipa’s At Your Service podcast to discuss his upcoming film and promised it would be groundbreaking. “[It will feature] the kind of dialogue that I don’t think a Western film has ever captured between two men,” he told Lipa.

The film he explained is about two men, sheriff Jake (Hawke) and gunslinger Silva (Pascal), who confront one another after 25 years. “One of them travels through the desert to find the other,” Almodóvar previously explained to IndieWire. “There will be a showdown between them, but really the story is very intimate.”

“This is a queer Western in the sense that there are two men and they love each other,” Almodóvar teased to Lipa. “And they behave in that situation in an opposite way.”

It will be a true Western, he explained, calling back to the classic tropes of the genre. “It’s about masculinity in that deep sense because the Western is a male genre,” Almodóvar shared. “It has the gunslinger. It has the ranch. It has the sheriff. It has the town. It has the showdown.”

“It’s something very different,” he shared, explaining this is unlike his previous films. “I mean, it’s another genre that I’ve never done before.” Almodóvar decided to make his own film after being faced with restrictions and limits he was presented with when he was considered to direct the iconic queer western, Brokeback Mountain.

As for when audiences will finally get their eyes on the highly anticipated short film, Almodóvar, who is still in the process of editing it, says it will make its official debut Cannes Film Festival in May.