All About My Mother

Argentine Manuela Echevarria, an organ transplant coordinator at a Madrid hospital, ran off from her husband in Barcelona eighteen years ago upon learning that she was pregnant. She has never told her son Esteban, an aspiring writer, about his father despite his curiosity. An event coinciding with Esteban turning seventeen leads to Manuela feeling the need to return to Barcelona to look for her husband. She ends up further acting as a maternal figure for people in need. One is a young nun named Sister Rosa, who she meets through her old friend, a transvestite prostitute who has assumed the name Agrado in her agreeable nature. Rosa has a strained relationship with her own conservative mother as she is consumed with caring for her ill husband, who suffers from Alzheimer's. The other is actress Huma Rojo, currently appearing as Blanche Dubois in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire, which has long been a touchstone for Manuela, productions of it coinciding with milestone moments in her life. Huma is in a troubled codependent relationship with her younger costar Nina Cruz, a closet junkie, hence Huma's need for emotional support. By the end of her stay in Barcelona, Manuela will have another non-relative for whom she will feel the need to act as a mother figure.