Pedro Almodovar recruits Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton for his first English-language feature film

Filming for The Next Room will take place between New York and Madrid, starting in March.

After weeks of speculation, it’s now official. The next film of Pedro Almdovar will be filmed in English, with Julianne Moore in one of the main roles. She joined Tilda Swinton, who had already revealed his participation in the project to Inrocks in December. El Deseo, the Spanish filmmaker’s production company founded by his brother Agustín Almodóvar, confirmed this after the publication of a Spanish media outlet on Instagram.

Shooting The Room Next Door will begin next March and will take place in New York and Madrid. And John Turturro will also be in the cast of the film, the official synopsis of which has been revealed:

The Room Next Door is the complex story of a flawed mother and her daughter, separated by a massive misunderstanding.
At the heart of this conflict, Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a friend of Martha’s (Tilda Swinton) mother, becomes a witness to each person’s pain and bitterness.
Martha is a war reporter, Ingrid is an autofiction novelist.
The film addresses the limitless cruelty of wars and highlights the unique approaches of the two writers to depict reality. It explores the themes of death, friendship, and sexual pleasure, considered essential allies in the fight against horror.
In a house nestled in the heart of a nature reserve in New England, the two friends will experience a situation that is both extreme and surprisingly tender.

In recent years, Pedro Almodovar has multiplied projects in English. In 2020, he released a first medium-length film, The Human Voice, already with Tilda Swinton. Then he began preparing a feature film in the language of Shakespeare with Cate Blanchett, adapted from the novel A Manual for Cleaning Women (Manual for housekeepers), which he unfortunately had to abandon in 2022. Last May, he presented at Cannes Strange Way of Lifea 30-minute queer western starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal.

The latest feature film from the Spanish director, Madres paralelas, was released in 2021. In competition in Venice, it won Penélope Cruz the Female Actor Prize.