Parallel Mothers: New Penelope Cruz film promoted with poster of lactating nipple

The striking poster was released today ahead of the Venice Film Festival next month

Penelope Cruz (Getty)

Penelope Cruz’s latest collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar is being promoted with a poster featuring nothing but a lactating nipple.

The film, titled Parallel Mothers, will open the Venice Film Festival on 1 September.

The film’s striking poster shows an image of a lactating nipple, with many on social media responding to the image. “What a poster!” one Twitter user wrote, while another added: “One of the most interesting film posters in years.”

Shot during the pandemic, the film explores the relationship between two expectant mothers who meet in a hospital room prior to giving birth. Other cast members include Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde, Julieta Serrano, and Rossy de Palma.

The official synopsis from Sony reads: “Two women, Janis and Ana, coincide in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. Both are single and became pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, doesn’t regret it and she is exultant. The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared, repentant and traumatised. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors.

“The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which by chance develops and complicates, and changes their lives in a decisive way.”

Almodóvar has a long history with the oldest film festival in the world and said in a written statement that he was “born as a film director in 1983 in Venice.” In 2019, he was given the Festival’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

Speaking about his film opening the festival, he said: “I cannot explain the joy and the honour, and how much this means to me without falling into complacency,” Almodóvar continued. “I am very grateful to the festival for this recognition and hope to be up to it”.

Festival director Alberto Barbera said the film is “an intense and sensitive portrait of two women as they contend with a pregnancy with unpredictable consequences, women’s solidarity, and sexuality that is experienced in full freedom and without hypocrisy, all against the backdrop of a reflection on the ineluctable need for truth that is to be unwaveringly pursued”.

The Venice International Film Festival is scheduled to run through 11 September on the sleepy beach island Lido.

The festival will also host the premiere of Denis Villeneuve’s anticipated adaptation of Dune, starring Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, as well as David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills. The franchise’s star Jamie Lee Curtis will also receive a lifetime achievement award at the festival.