MVFF49: ¡VIVA EL CINÉ!—BITTER CHRISTMAS (2026) / BUNKER (2026) REVIEWS

For 13 years through their ¡Viva el Cine! sidebar, the Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) has celebrated the richness of Ibero-American cinema, featuring films in Spanish and Portuguese, as well as Latinx and Latin American stories from around the world. This initiative curates films that resonate with these communities, offering a space where history, culture, and identity come alive. The offerings range from shorts programs to feature films in both narrative and documentary genres, several recently lauded in their festival runs. Sony Pictures has picked up two major entries for theatrical from the fifteen on view in this year’s selection.  

Bitter Christmas / Amarga Navidad (2026); Dir. Pedro Almodóvar—In recent political parlance it is often said that “the process is the punishment.” The same could be applied to creativity and its attendant hazards. Just when you think you can hold a mirror up to your relationships and winnow out an inspired theme or two, you discover the strategy doesn’t fly with friends and partners who object to being fictionalized without their consent. Which worries the point spotlighted by João Federici in his MVFF program capsule: “Who owns the story?” 

Almodóvar cleverly layers his narratives—the one you’re supposed to accept as real and the one you’re supposed to accept as imagined—and it’s in the discrepancy between the two where the entertainment lies. With a vibrant palette of reds and blues that flows like a narrative trajectory of its own, it’s fascinating how gay film director Raúl Rossetti (Leonardo Sbaraglia) recklessly switches gender and inserts himself into a draft script as comely Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), an alter ego who isn’t quite as sensitive to the plight of her real-life counterpart Mónica (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) as (s)he should be. Let alone that Raúl imagines his life partner Santi (Quim Gutiérrez) as an overly objectified blonde firefighter turned stripper in his spare time named Bonifacio (deliciously played by Patrick Criado). You know how they say truth is often said in jest? Well, fiction often reveals unintended truths, which is often not a laughing matter.

   

Bunker (2026); Dir. Florian Zeller—Yet another political conceit in our current moment is reportage from major media outlets, tech reporting, and broadcast networks extensively documenting the trend of ultra-wealthy individuals constructing underground bunkers, private compounds, and remote survival infrastructure. Bunker asks, “Why?” The billionaire (Paul Dano) who has asked architect Miguel Moreno (Javier Bardem) to design such an underground bunker finds the question naïve and the answer evident when confronted during a Zoom session. The more challenging question is why Moreno doesn’t recognize he’s bunkering down as well, against his wife Sofia (Penélope Cruz) and his blue-collar neighbor Toby (Stephen Graham)? 

The ideas in Bunker are compelling and current and the performances strong enough to sustain them, but their execution, their articulation, is often heavy-handed and sometimes feel preciously metaphorical. At an art opening Miguel and Sofia question the paintings of an artist who paints scenes and then disguises them under a layer of black paint. A dispute with a neighbor results in a black tarp placed over a hole punched into a wall and it looks exactly like the black painting. I appreciate the exercise in concealing what asks to be revealed, but Bunker is indecisive on its feet; first it meanders and agonizes and then rushes towards insight head-on without looking both ways.