Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door clocks an 18-minute standing ovation at Venice Film Festival

Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar’s new film The Room Next Door clocked an impressive 18-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival.

Specifically, Deadline reported the ovation lasted 18 minutes and 36 seconds while The Hollywood Reporter and Variety put it at closer to 17 minutes.

Deadline added Almodovar stood as the lights came on and kissed the hands of his stars, Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, and led them from the gallery to the floor. The three enthusiastically clapped along with the crowd.

Film festivals such as Venice and Cannes are known for their standing ovations but 18 minutes is long even by their standards. The Room Next Door is the longest applause session so far at Venice this year. Director Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is currently running second at 13 minutes.

The standing ovation has become something of a sideshow of the festivals, running alongside the more traditional metrics of reviews.

The more “serious”, auteur-led films such as The Room Next Door, The Brutalist and Pablo Larrain’s Maria tend to garner a longer ovation while more commercial films such as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice have to settle for three minutes.

No contest as to which movie will eventually make more money at the global box office.

The Room Next Door is Almodovar’s first English-language film in his long and prolific career, which has included All About My Mother, Volver and Pain and Glory.

The film is the story of Martha (Swinton) and Ingrid (Moore), two women who reunite just as Martha is diagnosed with terminal cancer.

At the press conference earlier in the day, Swinton said of The Room Next Door, “This film is a portrait of self-determination, somebody who takes her living and her dying into her own hands. It’s about a triumph, I think.”

Swinton added that she was not personally afraid of death, and that she never has been. She said, “Because of certain experiences in my life, I became aware early. I know it’s coming. I feel it coming. I see it coming.”

Almodovar also offered his thoughts on mortality. He said, “I cannot understand that something that is alive has to die. The way that I feel is that every day that’s passed is a day less that I have. And I wouldn’t like to just feel that it was a day more that I lived.”