Spanish master director Pedro Almodóvar has just made two outstanding English-language shorts and they are together here in one program. In Strange, Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal are two gunslingers who reunite after 25 years. With his love of heightened emotion, Almodóvar's answer to Brokeback Mountain finds a ready home in the Western genre. (Spain, 2023, 30m)

Tilda Swinton buys an ax toward the start of The Human Voice, a perfect half hour of film that packs the punch of a dozen features. Waiting for a lover who has left her, her breakdown is handled with Almodóvar's trademark empathy. Sometimes, you need to burn everything to the ground to start over—or to see Swinton do it in a pair of gold lamé pants, which is frankly just as good. (Spain, 2020, 30m)

The program ends with a recorded conversation with the writer-director (31m)