However, the reasons for it are not very hard to guess. During his career spanning 50 years, the filmmaker has made intense theatrical storytelling, imbued with generous use of song and dance, his domain.

But the Indian connection of Saura—who is in Mumbai to receive the Global Lifetime Achievers Award at the 10th MAMI International Film Festival on Thursday—doesn’t end with his interest in Hindi films. “Zubin Mehta will be conducting the operatic version of my film Carmen in Italy’s Florence next month,” says Saura, who admires Satyajit Ray. “I grew up watching Ray’s films and recently gave a talk on his works and life. I’m also fond of Mrinal Sen and Mira Nair’s works,” he says.

But he hasn’t seen much of contemporary Indian cinema, as they are not shown in Spain. What’s heartening is that they are trying to create a platform for Indian films, he says.

Passionate about dance and music, Saura, whose mother was a pianist, has proposed make a film on Indian music. The project revolving around a group of flamenco artistes searching for its roots in India still hasn’t got a go-ahead. Still, the filmmaker who introduced himself as “75-year-old, maker of 40 films and father of seven”, says that this film would be one of the projects he would like to complete before retiring.

Saura, who forms the troika of iconic Spanish filmmakers along with Luis Bunuel and Pedro Almodovar, is currently making Io Don Giovanni whose first phase of shooting in Vienna is over. “I will resume its shooting after Carmen is staged,” he says. This film will explore the making of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which has always fascinated Saura.

Saura, who is one of the first Spanish filmmakers to deal with Spanish Civil War and the aftermath, has in recent years shifted his focus to cultural issues. But the use of allusion and allegory he had adopted to avoid censorship during the 36-year dictatorship of Franco still dominates his narrative.

“Doing musicals come easy to me. I find depicting fictions more strenuous,” says the filmmaker, known for visualising a film’s scenes according to music. His filmography consisting of a trilogy on Flamenco, Tango and most-recent Fados, a drama steeped in Portugal’s Fado music culture, confirms this.

For the prolific filmmaker—who happens to be a great photographer and is travelling with his camera—capturing images remains a part of preserving memory. But it’s an exercise in reverse while making films. His cinema is textured with autobiographical slices—which he terms as “decoding memories”.

The MAMI festival might have celebrated his work by screening eight of his films and by honouring him, but Saura dreads revisiting his earlier works. “I wish I never have to watch them again. All of them could have been so much better,” he says, tongue-in-cheek.