With Julieta, which premieres at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, director Pedro Almodóvar returns to the “feminine universe” in trademark colourful fashion.

The film, starring Emma Suarez as the older woman and Adriana Ugarte as her younger self, shows a mother drifting into depression after her daughter disappears. Her husband Xoan, played by Daniel Grao, has died several years beforehand.

“I think I have come back to a place – a place that I will never leave all together which is the universe of women – the feminine universe,” Almodóvar, who won the best director award in Cannes for All About my Mother in 1999, said.

He has not made a woman-focussed film since Volver 10 years ago and in Julieta he also explores another favourite theme – mothers.

“I have done lots of movies about mothers but I believe this mother ... if you compare her with other mothers, she’s the most vulnerable mother,” he told a news conference.

Almodóvar’s 20th film is once again full of colours – red, orange and blue – giving the film a unique texture

“If we compare her to all other mothers in my films who are all powerful women with an ability to struggle which seems above human – but I turned Julieta into the victim of losses.”

Almodóvar’s 20th film is once again full of colours – red, orange and blue – giving the film a unique texture.

“I’m the son of technicolour. The first movies I remember as a child were in technicolour, very bright, contrasted colours.

“My films can be somewhat baroque and, of course, I’m a child of the 1960s. All of this led to an exaggerated use of colour.”

Questioned about his and his brother’s name being cited in the Panama Papers as having ties with an offshore company in the 1990s, he said: “If the Panama papers were a film ... we wouldn’t even be extras in that film.”