La ley del deseo (Law of Desire)

Followed by a talk with Fatma Aydemir

La ley del deseo revolves around a toxic love triangle: filmmaker Pablo (Eusebio Poncela) is unhappily in love with Juan. Pablo, in turn, is stalked and seduced by his young fan Antonio (Antonio Banderas). Finally, Pablo's sister Tina (Carmen Maura), an actress and trans woman raising a child on her own, also gets caught up in the chaos that ensues around her brother's love life.

It is not only one of Pedro Almodóvar's most personal films, but also one of the most controversial for its time due to the very explicit gay sex scenes. The provocations are deliberate, but never empty; Almodóvar develops a unique poetry of transgression in images and dialogue that recurs and is continued in his subsequent works. (FA)

Fatma Aydemir is a writer and journalist. Her first novel, Ellbogen, was made into a film in 2024 by Asli Özarslan. Her second novel, Dschinns, was published in 2022 and has received multiple awards. Fatma is co-editor of the literary magazine Delfi, a columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian and the author of the play Doktormutter Faust, a Goethe overwriting that premiered at Schauspiel Essen in 2023.