Bitter Christmas

About this event

"An elaborately nested reflection on creative license, story ownership and art imitating life imitating art."-Guy Lodge, Variety "Almodóvar nests one story inside another, leaps between them with breathtaking fluidity, and brings them both to a virtuosic, if abrupt, finish."-Justin Chang, The New Yorker Bitter Christmas tells two alternating stories, one starring Elsa, an advertising director, in 2004, during a long weekend in December. The second takes place in 2026 and stars Raúl, a screenwriter and director who is writing a script that we soon discover is the story of Elsa, her boyfriend Bonifacio, and her friends Patricia and Natalia. Mixed with fiction, Elsa is, in a way, Raúl's alter ego, who, like him, resorts to autofiction as a solution to a long period of creative drought. He looks inside himself, and he can't help but also look at the people who make up his most intimate universe: his partner and his assistant.