Cannes veteran Pedro Almodóvar has stormed to the top of the Screen Cannes jury grid with his latest film Pain And Glory, starring Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz reports Screen Daily.

Appearing in Competition at the festival for the sixth time, Almodóvar’s film took a 3.4 average, with two critics still to score. It achieved as many scores of four (excellent) as all the other titles so far put together, with four critics – Time’s Stephanie Zacharek, the LA Times’ Justin Chang, Die Zeit’s Katja Nicodemus and Positif’s Michel Ciment – all giving it top marks.

Almodóvar’s previous jury grid scores include a 2.4 for Julieta in 2016; a 2.8 for The Skin I Live In in 2011; a 3.2 for Broken Embraces in 2009; a 3.4 for Volver in 2006, that year’s jury grid winner; and a 3.2 for All About My Mother in 1999, which went on to win the Oscar for best foreign language film.

With its final two scores still to come, Pain And Glory could yet set a new record for the Spanish director.

Regular Almodóvar collaborators Banderas and Cruz respectively play a director looking back on his life and career, and the director’s mother, seen in flashback.