77-year-old Almodóvar says he is more ambitious now than at any other point in his career

Pedro Almodóvar, 77, told reporters on Tuesday that he is "absolutely more ambitious than ever" as he navigates the final stages of his latest film, "Bitter Christmas." The statement came during a sit-down interview at a Manhattan hotel in connection with the New York Film Festival, where the Spanish filmmaker addressed questions about his new work and his long career.

"Bitter Christmas" centers on Raul, a director whose career is fading, and his assistant Monica. Raul is writing a movie about Elsa, a woman making commercials, but he borrows heavily from his own life and relationships to build the script. The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. Almodóvar’s recent films, including "Pain and Glory" and "Parallel Mothers," each earned two Oscar nominations.

The director admitted that the character Raul shares traits with him, including panic attacks and a tendency to let people in his life recede into the background while he writes. However, Almodóvar stressed a key difference between his life and the fictional narrative. He described it as a "moral responsibility" to ensure that real people are not easily recognizable in his scripts.

"I always mix any external inspiration with fiction and change a lot of characteristics so it ends up being someone unrecognizable," Almodóvar said. "I never make a portrait of a person and put it in a movie. I conceal it in some way." He noted that friends sometimes believe they are on screen, but he attributed this to vanity rather than accuracy.

The structure of the film shifted late in the writing process. Almodóvar explained that he originally planned to focus more on the character of Elsa. Instead, he expanded the role of Monica, who confronts Raul about using her life to save his script. "That explosive encounter wasn't there from the beginning, and when it occurred to me, it completely changed the direction of the story," he said.

Almodóvar described the scene where Monica questions Raul as a way for him to critique his own process. "I was myself in front of Monica," he said. "I didn't want to do a portrait of a self-complacent director.. And I wanted to question my work, which I do through Monica's character." He found the self-criticism to be liberating and entertaining to write.

The filmmaker said that suffering offers a more complex portrait of people than happiness does. "If you're happy, there's no tension," he said. He added that he is happier when writing than when on vacation. Despite his self-doubt, which he said makes him less satisfied with his writing, Almodóvar stated that he is more demanding of himself and his time now than at the start of his career.