Tilda Swinton works again with auteur Pedro Almodóvar for his English-language feature film debut.
Swinton, who starred in Almodóvar’s short film “The Human Voice,” plays a dying journalist who reunites with her old friend (Julianne Moore). The official synopsis reads: Ingrid (Moore) and Martha (Swinton) were close friends in their youth when they worked together for the same magazine. Ingrid became an autofiction writer while Martha became a war reporter, and life circumstances separated them. After years of no contact, they meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation.
JOhn Turturro, Alessandro Nivola and Juan Diego Botto also play.
Based on Sigrid Nunez’s novel “What Are You Going Through,” the film was shot in Madrid but focuses on Almodóvar’s “career-long fascination with women’s lives in an American vernacular, capturing Manhattan and upstate New York with rapturous affection,” according to a description.
The Room Next Door will premiere at the Venice Film Festival and later screen as a centerpiece showcase at TIFF and NYFF. This is Almodóvar’s 15th film.th New York Film Festival selection and ninth gala presentation. Since 1988, the NYFF has premiered numerous Sony Pictures Classics titles, most recently including Parallel Mothers and Pain and Glory. The NYFF Centerpiece screening will be the film’s U.S. premiere.
Swinton told IndieWire that The Room Next Door is an artistic extension of Pain and Glory, a semi-autobiographical film. Swinton said the upcoming film is “weirdly a natural successor to Pain and Glory, because it’s about mature friendships and how they sustain us and what we need them for at this stage of our lives. So it’s going to be very rich.”
She poked fun at “The Room Next Door,” saying, “It’s a beautiful thing, and I can’t say much more about it, but I can tell you, it’s a real Almodóvar film. What I can tell you is that in some ways it is about mature friendship.”
“The Room Next Door” was produced by Almodóvar’s El Deseo and will also be released by Sony Pictures Classics.
The Room Next Door premieres in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on December 20 and expands to select cities on December 25. The film will be released nationwide by Sony Pictures Classics in January 2025. Watch the teaser below.
