All About My Mother (1999)

On January 28, 2020, the Criterion Collection releases All About My Mother on Blu-ray. Pedro Almodóvar directed the film starring Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, and Candela Peña.

‘All About My Mother’ Criterion Summary

This Oscar-winning melodrama, one of Pedro Almodóvar’s most beloved films, provides a dizzying, moving exploration of the meaning of motherhood. In an instant, nurse Manuela (Cecilia Roth) loses the teenage son she raised on her own. Grief-stricken, she sets out to search for the boy’s long-lost father in Barcelona, where she reawakens into a new maternal role, at the head of a surrogate family that includes a pregnant, HIV-positive nun (Penélope Cruz); an illustrious star of the stage (Marisa Paredes); and a transgender sex worker (Antonia San Juan). Beautifully performed and bursting with cinematic references, All About My Mother is a vibrant tribute to female fortitude, a one-of-a-kind family portrait, and a work of boundless compassion.

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

• New 2K digital restoration, supervised by executive producer Agustín Almodóvar and approved by director Pedro Almodóvar, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Fifty-two-minute documentary from 2012 on the making of the film, featuring interviews with Pedro Almodóvar; Agustín Almodóvar; actors Penélope Cruz, Marisa Paredes, Cecilia Roth, and Antonia San Juan; production manager Esther García; and author Didier Eribon
• Television program from 1999 featuring Pedro Almodóvar and his mother, Francisca Caballero, along with Cruz, San Juan, Paredes, and Roth
• Forty-eight-minute post-screening Q&A in Madrid from 2019, featuring Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar, and Paredes
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Emma Wilson, along with (Blu-ray only) an interview with Pedro Almodóvar and a tribute he wrote to his mother, both from 1999

New cover by Petra Eriksson

Also available on iTunes