Pedro Almodóvar has always made personal films, but none have cut so close to the bone, or been so moving, as this autumnal masterpiece. Antonio Banderas, much-deserved winner of the Best Actor award in Cannes, shows a side of himself we’ve never seen before. Banderas is playing Almodóvar’s pain-ridden alter ego, a weary film director named Salvador Mallo, who’s hit a creative and spiritual impasse. Can he find the spark to make another film? The answer lies deep in his childhood memories of his beloved mother (Penélope Cruz) who raised him in a small stone village; of the sweet, illiterate laborer whose physical beauty revealed to the boy his true desire; and in life-changing present-day reunions with a dissolute, heroin-snorting actor and his former lover. Seamlessly flowing back and forth in time, its autumnal mood spiced with bursts of humor, Pain and Glory shows the director working at the height of his powers.

Winner: Best Actor, Cannes

In competition for the FIPRESCI Prize

Actor Antonio Banderas will be in attendance on January 3.