In the Time of the Butterflies is a 2001 feature film, produced for the Showtime television network, directed by Mariano Barroso and based on Julia Álvarez's book of the same name.

The story is a fictionalized account of the lives of the Mirabal sisters, Dominican revolutionary activists, who opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo and were assassinated on November 25, 1960.

During the montage, a title card appears that says: The scene shifts to a prison cell, where one of his victims, Minerva Mirabal (Salma Hayek), recounts the events of the story.

Minerva and her three sisters, Patria (Lumi Cavazos), Dedé (Pilar Padilla), and María Teresa "Maté" (Mía Maestro), live on a farm in rural Ojo De Agua.

Minerva, the outspoken sister, convinces her father, Enrique Mirabal (Fernando Becerril), to send her, Patria, and Maté to a boarding school.

The sisters return to the farm, and Minerva soon meets and falls in love with Virgilio "Lio" (Marc Anthony), a member of the Dominican resistance, who gives her the nickname "Butterfly", or Mariposa in Spanish.

While in law school, Minerva discovers that Lio has been killed by field agents of Trujillo Servicio de Inteligencia Militar on foreign soil.

While returning from a trip to visit their husbands, Minerva, Patria, and Maté are stopped on the road by a large group of Trujillo's policemen and soldiers.