Best Pedro Almodóvar Films, Ranked by IQ Score

Pedro Almodóvar's filmography is the most sustained engagement with Spanish post-Franco cultural identity, gender-and-sexuality, and family-architecture in cinema. The catalog spans the 1980s Movida Madrileña counterculture entries through the late-career memoir-mode films (Pain and Glory, Parallel Mothers).

Anchor picks: Pain and Glory (2019) is the catalog's most-direct autobiographical entry. Volver (2006) is the matrilineal-Spanish-rural canonical work. All About My Mother (1999) is the Best Foreign Language Oscar winner. Talk to Her (2002) is the catalog's most-controversial moral-architecture work. Parallel Mothers (2021) is the most-recent canonical entry.