This spring the Meadows Museum is proud to collaborate with Dallas Film to present a series of films that address the effects of Franco’s dictatorship. Each of these in-person screenings includes a brief talk to introduce the film and relate it to themes in the museum’s current exhibition, In the Shadow of Dictatorship: Creating the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art.

In Parallel Mothers, the acclaimed Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar confronts the legacy of the Franco era for the first time. Two single women, both pregnant by accident, meet in the hospital where they are going to give birth. While middle-aged Janis is happy about her pregnancy, adolescent Ana is afraid. The few words they exchange creates a close bond between the two, which by chance develops, complicates, and changes their lives. The story is framed within the larger context of Franco’s regime and deals with intergenerational grief in post-Franco Spain.