Pedro Almodóvar’s ‘The Room Next Door ‘ Set As New York Film Festival Centerpiece Selection

Jill Goldsmith
·2 min read

Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature The Room Next Door with Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton will be the Centerpiece selection at the 62nd New York Film Festival. The drama, an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s 2020 novel What Are You Going Through, make its U.S. premiere at Alice Tully Hall on Oct. 4, said the fest’s parent Film At Lincoln Center.

Moore stars as Ingrid, a best-selling writer who rekindles a relationship with her friend Martha, a war journalist played by Swinton. The two women immerse themselves in their pasts, but Martha has a request that will test their newly strengthened bond. As the NYFF put it, Almadovar here reframes his career-long fascination with the lives of women for an American vernacular, set in Manhattan and upstate New York.

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With John Turturro, Alessandro Nivola and Juan Diego Botto, among others.

Almodóvar called NYFF “my bridge to New York audiences for decades,” noting that one scene in the movie is of characters going see a film at Alice Tully Hall. “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,” the director said.

Dennis Lim, NYFF’s Artistic Director, called The Room Next Door “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 Oscar-winning Spanish director is an NYFF mainstay — at 15 selections starting in 1988 with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown opening night. That was followed by All About My Mother, Bad Education, Volver, Live Flesh, Talk to Her, Broken Embraces, Parallel Mothers, The Flower of My Secret, The Skin I Live In, Julieta, Pain and Glory, The Human Voice, and Strange Way of Life. Almodóvar made his feature-length debut in 1980 with Pepi, Luci, Bom.

The film is set to world premiere at the Venice film festival.

Sony Pictures Classics, a frequent Almodovar collaborator, acquired domestic rights early this year.

NYFF runs September 27–October 14. RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys is the the Opening Night selection. Its Closing Night film is Steve McQueen’s Blitz.

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