Christmas comes early this year, in the form of Pedro Almodóvar’s latest confection, a sly comedy about the perils of autofiction. It boasts not one but two Almodóvarian alter-egos in Barbara Lennie and Leonardo Sbaraglia as acclaimed but currently uninspired filmmakers who turn to the messier lives of their assistants and friends for story material (much to their chagrin). Bitter Christmas displays the control and authority that we have long since become accustomed to from this master of cinema: narrative sleight of hand, a dazzling colour palette that leaps from the screen, rich performances that span the spectrum from tragedy to farce and all stops in between.
In the circumstances, to reveal more of the plot(s) would risk spoiling some delicious surprises, so let’s just say that this is generally in a lighter mode than the equally self-reflexive Pain and Glory; it’s a mischievously meta mea culpa from a modernist simultaneously transfixed and transported by the image of cinema as an infinitely suggestive hall of mirrors.
Bárbara Lennie, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Patrick Criado, Milena Smit
Spain
2026
In Spanish with English subtitles
At Vancouver Playhouse
At The Park & The Rio
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Esther García
Producer
Agustín Almodóvar
Screenwriter
Pedro Almodóvar
Cinematography
Pau Esteve Birba
Editor
Teresa Font
Production Design
Antxon Gómez
Original Music
Alberto Iglesias
Pedro Almodóvar
Filmography: A Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988); All About My Mother (1999); Talk to Her (2002); Volver (2006)
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
The Haunting
Directed by Robert Wise in 1963, The Haunting is a classic exercise in the suggestive power of cinema, adapted from Shirley Jackson's 1959 best-seller, The Haunting of Hill House, a provocative blend of supernatural and psychological horror.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Once Upon a Time in Harlem splices together footage shot by William Greaves in 1972 of a group of Harlem Renaissance luminaries in conversation at Duke Ellington’s townhouse. The film is a living archive of memory, disagreement, style, and Black genius.
Possible Love
Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning (2018) is a sardonic, slow-burning satire about two couples: a documentary filmmaker married to a wealthy businessman, and a working-class family struggling to make ends meet after the husband has been laid off.
Get Out
Guess who's coming to dinner? Daniel Kaluuya is the Black boyfriend justifiably anxious about meeting his white girlfriend's folks for the first time in Jordan Peele's satiric modern horror classic, one of a series curated by our VIFF+ Premium members.