`I am very excited about coming back to Venice in such a special year, with Covid 19 as involuntary guest,` said Pedro Almodóvar. `Everything will be different, and I am looking forward to discovering it in person. It is an honour to accompany Tilda in a year in which she is receiving a very much deserved award. As a matter of fact, The Human Voice is a festival of Tilda, a display of her infinite and assorted registers as an actress. It's been a spectacle to direct her.`
It's not the first time he's visited this material as an early iteration of his 1988 classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown began as an adaptation of this text, featuring a phone call in which a woman attempts to convince their partner not to leave. Working on the English-language short film was testing ground for the director to adapt Lucia Berlin's stellar short story collection A Manual for Cleaning Women, but that shoot has been delayed and he'll instead reteam with Penelope Cruz for his next feature Madres Paralelas.