“I had just done Cronos and Mimic, and Mimic had almost destroyed me… I couldn’t quite finance a new movie, and a few years earlier, Pedro had seen Cronos in the Miami Film Festival and he said ‘Look, if you ever want to shoot a movie in Spain, call me and my brother.’”

When filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar ed him through both production challenges and personal struggles, saving his life and giving him a second wind in his career.

TIFF Cinemathque’s marquee series Laws of Desire: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar is on now through December 29. Learn more about the series and the rest of TIFF Lightbox’s year-round programming at tiff.net.