BBFF26 Bitter Christmas

Pedro Almodóvar returns to Spanish-language cinema with a playful, intricately layered story about the slippery line between life and art. Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a filmmaker in the midst of a creative crisis, begins writing after tragedy strikes one of his closest collaborators. His screenplay imagines Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), another filmmaker whose life increasingly mirrors his own. As the two stories fold into each other, real relationships, private grief and creative inspiration become impossible to separate. Featuring a superb ensemble including Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Patrick Criado, Milena Smit and Quim Gutiérrez, Bitter Christmas is classic Almodóvar: visually sumptuous, funny, self-aware and fascinated by the stories we tell about ourselves - and what happens when the people we love become part of the material. NSW Premiere