Pedro Almodóvar is officially gearing up to shoot his next film, “Bitter Christmas,” a holiday-set tragicomedy that marks the Spanish auteur’s return to his native language after back-to-back English-language efforts.
Announced last October during an interview, “Bitter Christmas” will center on a woman abandoned during the holiday season—classic Almodóvar terrain, blending melodrama with emotional rawness. According to a new report from HOLA!, the director’s 24th feature is now in pre-production and will begin filming this month in the Canary Islands.
Victoria Luengo (“The Room Next Door”) and Patrick Criado (“Riot Police”) will lead the cast. The two previously worked together on “Riot Police” and bring serious local cred: Criado is a Feroz and Ondas winner, while Luengo has quickly become one of Spain’s rising stars.
Notably, “Bitter Christmas” will be shot in Spanish, marking a return to form for Almodóvar after his recent English-language projects, “Strange Way of Life” (2023) and “The Room Next Door” (2024), which starred Tilda Swinton, and Julianne Moore. With this latest film, it looks like Almodóvar is going back to his roots.
Despite receiving generally positive—but not overwhelmingly enthusiastic—reviews, “The Room Next Door “took home the Golden Lion at the 81st Venice Film Festival last year. Personally, I really liked the film. In my festival coverage, I wrote the following about it:
Don’t listen to the naysayers who claim Almodovar’s latest melodrama, his first English feature, was a disappointment. There’s a reason why “The Room Next Door,” a meditation on death, won the Golden Lion, and it’s because Almodovar has made a real beauty of a film. Unlike Almodovar’s other works, “The Room Next Door” isn’t filled with twists and turns; rather, it’s a simple story, and beautifully told at that.
Almodóvar has had a storied filmmaking career since his 1980 debut “Pepi, Luci, Bom.” His most notable works include “Talk to Her,” “The Skin I Live In,” “Pain and Glory,” “Broken Embraces,” and “Women on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown.”