Q&A: Almodóvar on unearthing the past in ‘Parallel Mothers’

ALMODÓVAR: At that moment, I was sick. I got the virus the first week. Even before the first week. I had just arrived from LA after being at the Oscars at the end of February. Then I felt like I had a flu and stayed at home. Three days later, they called for the quarantine. The days were so long that I tried just to talk and write something about the situation. One day, I was disobedient and went into the street to see Madrid completely deserted. It’s a very impressive image that I wanted to have. So I pretended to go buy something just to see, just to see the town.

AP: It must have felt ironic that in the midst of a pandemic you were making a movie where swabs and lab tests, in proving the children’s maternity, is central to the plot.

ALMODÓVAR: When I was writing the movie a year before, it was like science fiction. But when we made the film, it did feel very familiar.

AP: What initially interested you in making a film that deals with the mass graves from the Spanish Civil War?

ALMODÓVAR: This has come to me with maturity, in cinematographic terms and also in personal terms. It’s been some time since I’ve been wanting to make a movie about the mass graves, which Spanish cinema has not really touched on. One of the things that really struck me was when in about 2013, 2014 some UN rapporteurs came to take a look on the ground at what was happening in Spain. They were very struck by the fact that it was the great-grandchildren who were the ones demanding that we look at this problem of the past. Spain has a very bad relationship with the past. For the 40 years after the war, there was this almost pathological fear to speak of the war. There was this silence that enshrouded Spain. It’s a generation born during democracy that are asking for the graves to be exhumed.