Bitter jul
The latest work from Pedro Almodóvar is his most nakedly self-reflective since Pain and Glory: an autofiction that makes the act of creation its very subject, asking what an artist owes to the people whose lives he turns into art. Shot in his customary sensual palette, scored by Alberto Iglesias and led by Bárbara Lennie and Leonardo Sbaraglia, it takes its title and its aching heart from the Chavela Vargas song of the same name.
Elsa, an advertising director in Madrid, loses her mother during the long days of the Christmas holidays. Unable to grieve, she does the only thing she knows how to do — she works, without pause, until a panic attack forces her to stop. Seeking air, she escapes with her friend Patricia to the volcanic landscapes of Lanzarote, leaving her partner behind in the city. But hers is only one panel of the picture: running in parallel is the story of an ageing film director labouring over a screenplay drawn from the private sorrows of those closest to him, until the film becomes a hall of mirrors — a story about a filmmaker writing about a filmmaker, where memory, mourning and invention endlessly reflect one another.
Premiered in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Bitter Christmas is a melancholy meditation on grief, love, and the price of storytelling
- Spilletid
- 1 t. 51 min.
- OriginalTittel
- Amarga Navidad
- Språk
- Spansk
- Regi
- Pedro Alodóvar
- Skuespillere
- Belén Riquelme, Bárbara Lennie, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón
- Foto
- Pau Esteva Birba
- Manus
- Pedro Almodóvar
- Nasjonalitet
- Spania
- Produksjonsår
- 2026