Julieta

2016 1h 38m ES

👍

7.0

SOLID

★7.0TMDB · 940

DramaRomance

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

The film spans 30 years in Julieta’s life from a nostalgic 1985 where everything seems hopeful, to 2015 where her life appears to be beyond repair and she is on the verge of madness.

“Some stories are better left unspoiled.”

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Cast

Emma Suárez
Julieta Arcos
Adriana Ugarte
Julieta Arcos (young)
Daniel Grao
Xoan Feijóo
Inma Cuesta
Ava
Darío Grandinetti
Lorenzo
Michelle Jenner
Beatriz
Pilar Castro
Claudia (Beatriz's Mother)
Nathalie Poza
Juana

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Writers: Alice Munro, Pedro Almodóvar
Languages: Spanish
Countries: Spain, United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Shot for just $1.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Grossed $22M — a 15.1× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 10 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

International production across 2 countries: Spain, United States of America.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar, shot by Jean-Claude Larrieu. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Alberto Iglesias. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor José Salcedo shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte and Daniel Grao carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Pedro Almodóvar directs. Jean-Claude Larrieu behind the camera. Alberto Iglesias scores. José Salcedo cuts. Runs lean at under 100 minutes. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in Spain, United States of America. Dialogue in Spanish.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Shot for just $1.5M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
2Grossed $22M — a 15.1× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.
3Released 10 years ago.
4International production across 2 countries: Spain, United States of America.
5Directed by Pedro Almodóvar, shot by Jean-Claude Larrieu. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
6Original score by Alberto Iglesias. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
7Editor José Salcedo shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
8Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte and Daniel Grao carry the top of the cast.
9IMDB entry: tt4326444 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
10Classified under 17 themes, including "depression", "friendship", "madrid, spain", "lover".

The technical file

Cinematography: Jean-Claude Larrieu
Original score: Alberto Iglesias
Editing: José Salcedo
Production design: Antxón Gómez
Costume design: Sonia Grande
Makeup / hair: Ana López-Puigcerver
Sound: Marc Orts
Runtime: 98 min · 1h 38m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $1,490,000
Box office: $22,468,044
Return: 1508% of budget
Original language: ES
Certification (US): R
IMDB: Julieta (2016)

Awards

San Diego International Film Festival

Individual records documented via Wikidata; the summary above may count more.

Also by

Pedro Almodóvar

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Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

badelf2026-09-18
★ 8/10
Summary: 8/10: a devastating, exquisitely controlled study of how grief can sever even the deepest bonds, anchored by two extraordinary performances and Almodóvar's rare gift for making every element of a film disappear into the whole. Grief has a way of finding the fault line already running through a relationship and splitting it wide open, and Pedro Almodóvar's Julieta is one of the most exact studies of that process in narrative film. This isn't grief as a particular wound; it's rather a slow, silent estrangement between a mother and a daughter, each one unable to reach the other precisely because each is drowning in the same loss from a different angle. What the film understands, and what I suspect younger viewers may not yet be equipped to comprehend, is that traumatic grief doesn't always draw people together. Sometimes it corrodes the very bond it should be strengthening. Antía, we come to learn, cannot fully appreciate what her mother went through, or what their relationship meant, until much later in her own life. That's not a flaw in the character; it's the film's whole insight about grief and maturity, that some kinds of understanding are simply unavailable to us until we've lived long enough to need them. I want to mention a small discovery, since it may be my first time catching a genuine Easter egg in an Almodóvar film. While Julieta is packing, the camera dips down to a box holding a record, its cover clearly visible: an album by Ryuichi Sakamoto, the celebrated Japanese composer, whose music Julieta is listening to in that moment. The same album reappears later when she unpacks. It's a lovely small touch precisely because it's out of house style; Almodóvar has scored nearly every film of his career with Alberto Iglesias and only one with Sakamoto, so a needle-drop credit to him stands out as a deliberate, specific choice. It says something about the care Almodóvar puts into even the objects passing through frame for two seconds, and it rewards anyone paying close enough attention to notice. The direction is, as ever with this director, extraordinary. Almodóvar's signature lush color palettes are present but pulled inward here, more subdued, darker, weighted toward reds, blues, and deep olives, a palette that mourns rather than celebrates, and it suits this film's interior sadness perfectly. What continues to astonish me about his filmmaking is the total harmony he achieves between every element, color, camera, performance, script, music. Nothing dominates. Nothing calls attention to itself as the "best part." It functions like a magic trick where you can watch it happen twice and still not locate the seam. The performances anchor all of it. Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte play Julieta at two different ages, and both are extraordinary in ways that never feel like acting, only like living. The handoff between them, the way the same woman's grief looks entirely different at twenty years' distance, is one of the film's quietest triumphs, and neither actress overplays a single moment of it.

Production companies