Pedro Almodóvar has released a first teaser for “Bitter Christmas” (“Amarga Navidad”), his next Spanish-language feature, setting up a March 20, 2026 theatrical launch in Spain through Warner Bros. Pictures. The project is in post-production and follows “The Room Next Door,” the filmmaker’s first English-language feature, which Sony Pictures Classics handled in North America.
“Bitter Christmas” centers on Elsa, an advertising director who loses her mother during a long December holiday and throws herself into work until a crisis forces a stop. Elsa then travels to Lanzarote with her friend Patricia, while her partner, Bonifacio, stays in Madrid. A second narrative track follows a screenwriter and a film director, with the film tying the characters’ lives to questions about how personal experience becomes material for storytelling, and what gets lost along the way.
Bárbara Lennie leads the cast alongside Leonardo Sbaraglia, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Victoria Luengo, Patrick Criado, Milena Smit and Quim Gutiérrez, with Rossy de Palma also in the ensemble. Sony’s announcement of its 2025 rights deal highlighted how many of the actors and key crew members have worked with Almodóvar before, a pattern that often gives his films a fast shorthand on set and a familiar tonal rhythm on screen.
Sony Pictures Classics acquired North American rights from El Deseo, the Almodóvar brothers’ company, and described the film as having recently wrapped production at the time of the deal. In Spain, Movistar Plus+ is backing the film alongside El Deseo, with a later streaming release planned after the theatrical run, according to earlier reporting tied to the project’s launch.
Behind the camera, Almodóvar again works with producer Agustín Almodóvar and composer Alberto Iglesias, with Teresa Font editing and Pau Esteve Birba serving as director of photography. The teaser’s arrival gives distributors their first public hook for a story built around grief, work, friendship and self-mythmaking, while festival plans and non-Spanish release dates remain unannounced.
