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The Room Next Door (Spanish: La habitación de al lado) is a 2024 Spanish drama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, in his English-language feature debut, based on the 2020 novel What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez. Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore star with John Turturro and Alessandro Nivola in supporting roles. The plot follows the relationship between two close friends (Swinton and Moore) as the former faces the prospect of ending her life due to terminal illness.
The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 81st Venice International Film Festival on 2 September 2024, where it won the Golden Lion, a first for a Spanish film. It was released theatrically in Spain on 18 October 2024 by Warner Bros. Pictures. It won three Goyas (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score) at the 39th Goya Awards.
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Plot
Ingrid is a successful author who learns that Martha, a friend with whom she once worked at the same magazine, has terminal cancer. They reconnect at the Manhattan hospital where Martha is being treated, and Martha tells Ingrid her life story. In the 1970s, Martha became impregnated by Fred, a young man she had met in college. Fred left to fight in the Vietnam War, returning with PTSD. Fred later left and remarried, leaving Martha's daughter Michelle to constantly ask her mother about Fred's whereabouts as she grew up. Wanting to appease her daughter, Martha reached out to Fred's wife, who informed her that Fred had died trying to save a nonexistent person whose voices he hallucinated from a house fire. Michelle grew resentful of her mother and became estranged. In the present day, Martha has no family, and reveals to Ingrid that she recently bought euthanasia pills so that she could secretly end her life.
