Bárbara Lennie as Elsa with Victoria Luengo as Patricia
“You can lie in life, but not when you write.”
Amarga Navidad (Bitter Christmas- 2026) was first released in Madrid, Spain in March 2026 and had its international premiere in May at the 79th Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for the Palme d’Or and the Queer Palm, and composer Alberto Iglesias won the Cannes Soundtrack award. Its UK premiere took place on August 17th with a Q&A by the director at the Curzon Mayfair.
A cult filmmaker is suffering writer’s block and has been in some level of existential angst for 5 years searching for inspiration. When his closest colleague suffers a tragedy in her personal life he turns her story into a screenplay, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, as gradually his character’s lives start to mirror his own.
Aitana Sánchez-Gijón as Mónica with Leonardo Sbaraglia as Raúl.
‘A story within a story’, or ‘a play within a play’, a Shakespearean dramatic technique is illuminated here with Almodóvar’s parallel stories where fiction starts to mirror reality, or is it the other way around? The film’s structure resembles the premise of Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in search of an Author”, where a group of six lost actors desperately search for an author to complete their stories.
In ‘Bitter Christmas’, it is the film director, Raúl, who’s searching for his actors (characters), working on his unfinished story, for which he yearns to find a satisfying ending searching insensitively among his close friends for inspiration.
Milena Smit as Natalia with Bárbara Lennie as Elsa
Almodova admits he was excited to work in this new format: -
“It was really what attracted me the most. It was novel for me, the possibility that a film suddenly reaches a moment where it turns round and questions itself with all that wonderful acting from the two main characters, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón who plays Mónica and Leonardo Sbaraglia, who plays Raúl.”
It is only after about one hour that the film opens up and reveals what is really going on. There is such intricate storytelling that is it reminiscent of a detailed Chinese carved sculpture that continues deeper and deeper, the more you look, the more you see.
The narrative that is set in 2025 interweaves with a fictional story that is unfolding in 2004 as the director Raúl writes his new script. Almodóvar teases us, playing with reality and fiction so we are held in limbo between the two. Eventually we end up in 2025 and only becoming aware, half- way through the film, that the narrative we were following was all in the mind of the director Raúl, as he struggled to write his script.
Rossy de Palma plays Gabriela
As in ‘Pain & Glory’ (2019) with Antonio Banderas, there appears to be a strong autobiographical element in the existential emotions that arise in the questions raised by the film. These are clearly relevant to someone who is a writer and a director, like Pedro Almodóvar himself and he calls it ‘autofiction’.
Patrick Criado as Bonifacio (Beau)
As with a number of his more recent films, Almodóvar’s newer works express an underlying introspectiveness element of philosophical and moral questions that linger like a shadow over the whole work. Initially we struggle to know what is real and what is not. Nevertheless, there is some Almodóvar humour that seeps in gently through small absurdities and situations that can be picked up.
Quim Gutiérrez as Santi, Leonardo Sbaraglia as Raúl with the director
Despite its dark title, there is a sense of warmth and sorrow in Bitter Christmas as the underlying central theme is grief and how people struggle to deal with it. How they succeed or fail. Yet, he describes it as the cruellest film he has ever made. As he points out, he likes to write about characters he understands and knows best: -
“There is a lot of me in the character of Raul – I never told him to imitate me or anything but what is true is that most of phrases are phrases that I would say… When you create a character as a director which is your profession, he’s the character you know best. What I did not want to do was to paint a sugar-coated or self- indulgent portrait., on the contrary, I wanted a severe reflection, where he is challenged, so the character of Mónica suddenly rebels against him to settle scores with him, she almost destroys him. The thing is that it does not quite work out, because for a writer there is no such thing as a ‘bad’ situation. I mean, there are ‘terrible’ situations but it is always possible to turn that situation into something that becomes like an inspiration., so I turn it around… I wanted to shake up the totemic figure of the director and see his weaknesses and his flaws and… to question him about the fact that he doesn’t have the right to do everything that he does… it was a very liberating exercise!”
Raúl struggles with these issues as he clearly needs to be inspired by real people for his characters, and also by real events. He insists he needs ‘total freedom’, whatever that really means.
Is reality stranger than fiction then?
Bárbara Lennie
Raúl tries to deflect the echo of the reality on the ground that unfolds in his story, but in vain. After 5 years unable to come up with a good project, he is desperate to make this new film and cannot stop himself from allowing reality to filter into his story, be it from his own personal experiences, but also, significantly, by tapping the lives of people around him.
The starting point for Raúl’s script is a severe panic attack he himself experienced in 2004 that he transfers onto his protagonist ELSA, also a writer-director, who then suffers intensely debilitating migraines and nausea linked to her anxiety. She is nursed by her boyfriend Bonifacio (Patrick Criado) known as Beau, ( who behaves a lot like Santi, Raúl's partner) Though Bonifacio is a fireman, he works as a male stripper at hen parties and similar events in his spare time. He is astonishingly patient and thoughtful with her, even though they appear to have little in common.
Elsa works largely in the advertising industry and has a number of close friends, all with problems of their own. Beset by guilt at not having been at her mother’s side when she died, Elsa is obsessed with a deep need to help others. Mostly she fails. Despite consoling and encouraging her friend Patricia, who has impetuously made the move to leave her husband due to his ‘possible’ infidelity and controlling behaviour, Patricia decides to go back to him anyway. Her other friend, Natalia, who has lost her son in a tragic accident also does not respond to her kindness as expected, causing even more distress. Meanwhile Elsa’s boyfriend Bonifacio has become a character that remains almost in limbo, vanishing to the end of a telephone line.
Leonardo Sbaraglia and Quim Gutiérrez
Things come to a head when Mónica, Raúl’s faithful assistant of 20 years decides to take a ‘sabbatical’ to help her distraught girlfriend, Elena. Elena is recovering from a suicide attempt after losing her young son to cancer. When Mónica realizes that Raúl is using Elena’s story she challenges him for abusing her confidences. Meanwhile, mirroring the situation, in his screenplay Elsa is also challenged by her friends for the same reason.
The writer and director Pedro Almodóvar
There follows a conversation between Raúl where Monica challenges Raúl to look at himself and realize how he has become self- complacent. This previously dutiful and compliant assistant brims with fury and inspires Raúl to completely change the direction of his script. ‘Bitter Christmas’ questions the ethics as to whether taking someone else’s reality and using their grief and pain can be considered in any way acceptable, and how a director should learn to manage the ultimate power he wields on set and become more self- aware.
‘BITTER CHRISTMAS’ (2026) WILL BE ON GENERAL RELEASE ACROSS UK CINEMAS
From FRIDAY AUGUST 28TH 2026
Written and directed by PEDRO ALMODÓVAR
CAST
Barbara Lennie ELSA
Leonardo Sbaraglia Raul Rossetti
Aitana Sánchez-Gijón Mónica
Victoria Luengo Patricia
Patrick Criado Bonifacio ( Beau)
Milena Smit Natalia
Quim Gutiérrez Santi
Rossy de Palma Gabriela
Dr García Carmen Machi
Amaia Amaia Romero as herself-
Production: Agustín Almodóvar/ Executive Producer: Esther García / Music: Alberto Iglesias (Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy)/ DOP: Pau Esteve Birba (The Good Boss) / Editor: Teresa Fonti (AMAE) / Production Designer: Antxon Góme / Associate Producers: Barbara Pieró, Diego Pajuelo /Production Director: César Pardiñas / Direct Sound: Sergio Bürmann/ Sound Editor: Laia Picón / Sound Mixer: Valeria Arcieri/ La Llorona de Luis Martínez Serrano sung by Chavela Vargas/ El Deseo SL Production company.
Shot in Madrid and Lanzarote
