Premiering at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, director Pedro Almodóvar’s (Parallel Mothers) English-language debut The Room Next Door is competing for the Best Film Golden Lion. This film marks Almodóvar’s first English film and feature-length project since his 2021 film Parallel Mothers. 

The Film

From Oscar-winning Spanish director Almodóvar comes his first English feature-length film. Almodóvar directed the film and wrote the script alongside Sigrid Nunez (The Friend). The Room Next Door stars Julianne Moore (Dear Evan Hansen) as Ingrid and Tilda Swinton (The Human Voice) as Martha, two friends reuniting after years of separation. John Turturro (Fading Gigolo), Alessandro Nivola (Amsterdam), Melina Matthews (More the Merrier), Alex Høgh Anderson (Vikings), and Juan Diego Botto (The Suicide Squad) star alongside Moore and Swinton. 

The Room Next Door follows “a very imperfect mother and a spiteful daughter separated by a serious misunderstanding. Between them, another woman, Ingrid, the mother’s friend, is the keeper of their pain and bitterness. Martha, the mother, is a war reporter and Ingrid an autofictional novelist. After years of being out of touch, they meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation.” The film’s synopsis mentions that the film “addresses the endless cruelty of war, the very different ways in which the two female authors approach and write about reality, death, friendship, and sexual pleasure as the best allies in the fight against horror.”