Pedro Almodóvar’s ‘The Room Next Door’ Heads for New York Film Festival as Centerpiece Selection

First Madrid, then New York, then Venice, and now: the New York Film Festival.

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Pedro Almodóvar’s “ The Room Next Door, ” which shot earlier this year on-location in Madrid and Manhattan, will play the New York Film Festival (NYFF) as its Centerpiece on October 4. NYFF has billed the melodrama, starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, as a U.S. premiere, which means New York is the next destination for Almodóvar’s first English-language feature after world-premiering in the Venice competition . That also means no Telluride screening, but it could still show up in Toronto for a North American premiere. The NYFF presentation of “The Room Next Door” will take place at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.

Here’s a more detailed synopsis than we’ve seen before, courtesy of NYFF: “Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a best-selling writer, rekindles her relationship with her friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), a war journalist with whom she has lost touch for a number of years. The two women immerse themselves in their pasts, sharing memories, anecdotes, art, movies — yet Martha has a request that will test their newly strengthened bond. Pedro Almodóvar’s finely sculpted drama, his first English-language feature, is the unmistakable work of a master filmmaker, a hushed and humane portrayal of the beauty of life and the inevitability of death, graced with incandescent performances by Moore and Swinton that tap the very essence of being. Adapting Sigrid Nunez’s treasure of a novel, What Are You Going Through, Almodóvar has exquisitely reframed his career-long fascination with the lives of women for an American vernacular, capturing Manhattan and upstate New York with enraptured affection.”

Sony Pictures Classics will later release “The Room Next Door” in theaters in December. Almodóvar previously directed Swinton in the 2020 short “The Human Voice” as a beta test for making a feature in English. He moved on from a planned English-language “A Manual for Cleaning Women” adaptation with Cate Blanchett to direct this film with Swinton and Moore, with the latter making her Almodóvar debut.

“I am delighted that ‘The Room Next Door’ will be the Centerpiece of the New York Film Festival,” Almodóvar said in a press statement. “This festival has been my bridge to New York audiences for decades, so it only felt natural that the two protagonists go see a film at the Alice Tully Hall in one of the scenes of the movie. It was very moving for me to shoot in a place that holds so very dear memories to me, and where I hope to keep on treasuring them in a not so distant future.”

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“Few filmmakers are as closely associated with the New York Film Festival as Pedro Almodóvar, and it is a true pleasure to present his first English-language feature as this year’s Centerpiece selection,” said Dennis Lim, NYFF’s artistic director. “’The Room Next Door’ is the work of an artist at the height of his powers: a wise, exquisitely acted, achingly beautiful film that feels perfectly calibrated to this moment.”

“The Room Next Door” is Almodóvar’s 15th NYFF premiere, nine of which have been gala selections. Almodóvar made his NYFF debut with 1988’s “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” with later premieres including “All About My Mother,” “Bad Education,” “Volver,” “The Flower of My Secret,” “The Skin I Live In,” “Julieta,” “Pain and Glory,” “The Human Voice,” and “Strange Way of Life.” His Oscar-winning “Talk to Her,” along with “Broken Embraces” and “Parallel Mothers,” all closed NYFF in years past.

NYFF’s 62nd edition runs September 27-October 14, opening with RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys” and closing with Steve McQueen’s “Blitz.”