Film: Bitter Christmas (Cert: 15A)

Film: Bitter Christmas (Cert: 15A)

About the film

Filmmaker Raúl is working on his latest film, Bitter Christmas. The script focuses on his alter-ego Elsa. Working through writer’s block and panic attacks, Elsa finds creative inspiration in the lives of those around her - but some friends are uncomfortable with the personal nature of her work. It becomes clear that Raúl is using Bitter Christmas to grapple with real-life moral quandaries. Is he betraying the trust of those closest to him by encompassing their traumas into his films?

With his new film, Pedro Almodóvar appears to have made one of his most candid and self-reflective works yet... or has he? Bitter Christmas proves another delightfully twisty and playful addition to the Spanish master’s oeuvre

Festivals:

Cannes Film Festival, 2026

‘Bitter Christmas is a playful, tangled meditation on film-making, memory and the ethics of turning real lives into art.’

Tara Brady, The Irish Times

‘There’s much fun to be had here: in its ripe and lively performances, in its characteristically splashy paintbox visual design, and in its twin-tracked, heavily metatextual narrative of artists following their bliss, sometimes to toxic effect.’

Guy Lodge, Variety

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Christmas FilmsScreeningsFilm Festivals

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