Pedro Pascal, Ethan Hawke 'queer Western' to premiere at Cannes 2023

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar will present his new short film, a queer Westernstarring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, at the Cannes Film Festival in May, organisers confirmed Tuesday.

Strange Way of Lifeis a 30-minute film featuring Pascal, who has become a global icon since starring in the TV show The Last of Us, as a gunslinger who meets up with a sheriff (Hawke) he knew 25 years earlier.

Almodovar has described it as his "answer to Brokeback Mountain," the hit 2005 film about gay cowboys, that he was briefly in talks to direct.

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It is "a queer Western, in the sense that there are two men and they love each other", he told the singer Dua Lipa on her podcast in December. "It's about masculinity in a deep sense because the Western is a male genre."

Almodovar is a regular at Cannes, where he won best director in 1999 for All About my Motherand best screenplay for Volverin 2006. He presided over the jury in 2017.

This year's edition, which runs May 16-28, is shaping up as a Hollywood who's who, with the new instalment of Indiana Jonesand the latest Martin Scorsese film, Killers of the Flower Moon, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, already confirmed.

The rest of the lineup will be announced Thursday.