Bitter Christmas

After his first English-language feature, the Golden Lion-winning The Room Next Door (2024), Pedro Almodóvar returned to Spanish and to the most nakedly personal material of his career; he has called Bitter Christmas the film in which he has been cruellest with himself. Produced by his brother Agustín at El Deseo with Movistar Plus+, it opened in Spain in March 2026, two months before its international premiere in competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, where Alberto Iglesias's score shared the Cannes Soundtrack Award, the composer's second after Pain and Glory.

The film runs on two tracks. In 2025, the filmmaker Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia) is writing a screenplay drawn from a panic attack he suffered in 2004; in the story within, told out of order, Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), a director of commercials, is hospitalised with a migraine over a long weekend, accompanied by her boyfriend Bonifacio (Patrick Criado), a firefighter who also works as a stripper. Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Milena Smit and Quim Gutiérrez fill out the ensemble. Pau Esteve Birba shot it in Madrid and Lanzarote, and Teresa Font edited. Almodóvar first pitched it as a tragic comedy about gender.

Reviews were warm but not unanimous: 87% on Rotten Tomatoes and 69 on Metacritic. Admirers praised the nested structure, the performances and the candour of the self-portrait (IndieWire's David Ehrlich found it self-flagellating but never apologetic), while detractors called it self-indulgent. With Pain and Glory, it is the director's most openly autofictional work, and it travelled on to Toronto, San Sebastián and the New York Film Festival.