Weekend films

'Amarga Navidad', Almodóvar's play between reality and fiction

After its presentation at the Cannes Film Festival, the new feature film by the Spanish director arrives in our cinemas

by Andrea Chimento

24 May 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

From the Croisette to Italian theatres: presented a few days ago in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Pedro Almodóvar's 'Amarga Navidad' arrives in our cinemas and is certainly the most eagerly awaited title among the weekend's new releases.

The narration is centred on the alternation of two stories: the first is set in 2004 and has as its protagonist Elsa, a director of commercials who suffers from terrible migraines; the second takes place in 2026 and has as its protagonist Raúl, a screenwriter and director who is writing a script that we will soon discover is the story of Elsa, her companion Bonifacio and the people who gravitate around her.

In a sort of game of Chinese boxes, Elsa becomes in what way the alter ego of Raúl, in turn an obvious alter ego of Pedro Almodóvar himself, an author who opts in this film for a profoundly autobiographical path, as he has already done in several of his past titles that hover in "Amarga Navidad", such as "The Broken Embraces" and even more so "Dolor y gloria".

Looking inside himself, Raúl cannot help but also turn his gaze to the people who make up his innermost universe, and the film tells precisely of the close link between reality and fiction, inspiration and life, also opening up several rather biting reflections on the limits of self-fiction.

A film full of melancholy

it is a painful and melancholy product of 'Amarga Navidad', not least with regard to how much has changed in the twenty years or so that separate the settings of the two stories, which intersect within each other.

The structure of the film is slightly cumbersome and runs the risk of being familiar, but Almodóvar knows how to excite, and within the narrative there are also cues that seem to come from 'The Room Next Door', his previous film that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2024.

Although not among his best works, the Spanish author's style is still very refined, elegant and capable of playing wonderfully with the relationship between images and music.

Contributing to the good overall result is a cast in top form, including Bárbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia and Victoria Luengo.

Don't Let the Sun

Among the new releases in theatres is the curious 'Don't Let the Sun' by Jacqueline Zünd, a film that takes place in a future suffocated by incessant heat. Social life has shifted entirely to the night hours. People live in isolation, unable to sustain authentic relationships, taking refuge in ever deeper forms of loneliness.

In this disturbingly similar world to our own, 28-year-old Jonah works for an agency that sells simulated bonds and emotional substitutes to those who can no longer cope with the emotional burden of human relationships.

Don't Let the Sun" is not such an original subject (titles such as Yorgos Lanthimos's "Alps", Werner Herzog's "Family Romance, LLC" or the recent "Rental Family" with Brendan Fraser may come to mind), although the narrative succeeds in engaging for the entire duration, despite a few too many didacticisms that make the story less fascinating.

The Swiss director falls into a few overly scholastic sequences in her staging, but the result of her work is nonetheless a delicate feature film that effectively speaks of the fragility of relationships and the difficulty of remaining humanly alive despite the context surrounding the characters.

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