Bitter Christmas
(2026)
★ 6.3 IMDb · 138 votes
Year: 2026
Runtime: 111 мин
Country: Spain
Director: Педро Альмодовар
Cast: Bárbara Lennie, Леонардо Сбаралья, Айтана Санчес-Хихон, Victoria Luengo, Патрик Криадо, Милена Смит, Quim Gutiérrez, Росси де Пальма, Carmen Machi, Diogo Belizario
Plot
Elsa is an advertising director whose mother dies during a long December holiday. She works non-stop and, without realizing, doesn’t give herself time to mourn her mother’s absence. After a crisis, Elsa decides to travel to the island of Lanzarote accompanied by her friend Patricia, who also needs to get away from the city. The story of these characters runs parallel to that of a screenwriter and film director, exploring how life and fiction are inseparably linked, sometimes painfully so.
After her mother dies, director of commercials Elsa immerses herself in work to cope. When migraine forces her to take a break, she decides to travel to Lanzarote in the 2004 Constitution Day's long weekend with her friend Patricia while her boyfriend (stripper and fireman Bonifacio) stays in Madrid. To resume creative writing, she vampirises the personal miseries of her close friends. In a timeline set in 2025, the plot explores how filmmaker Raúl is writing a script which turns out to be the story of Elsa, Raúl's alter ego. Raúl is delving into autofiction to overcome a creativity block, and is influenced by his own life, his boyfriend Santi and his assistant Mónica.