The starting point of The Offspring Resembles the Parent is the emergency currency printed in the 1920s­—banknotes used during times of crisis and inflation, or in colonies. The meticulously designed notes are often visually dramatic, featuring propagandist messages in word and image. Highlighting the almost cinematic qualities of the delicately colored colonial notes, Lina Selander and Oscar Mangione conjure up a bygone era, one in which a global political endeavor disastrously helped lay the foundations for our own welfare society: “colonialism as a vehicle for modernism,” as Iranian philosopher Hamid Dabashi puts it. The film contemplates the hyperinflation of values—on a both human and monetary level.