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TThe CCTV footage of the hospital corridor is crap but you can make out a girl carrying an oversized gift bag. There is nothing unusual there. Except that inside the bag is a newborn baby, just a few hours old. And the woman who carried the bag as she exited the main door of the hospital, passing two security guards who were just talking peacefully, is not the child’s mother.
Her name is Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza, known as Alejandra. When the filmmaker I love Alberdi met in a Mexican minimum-security prison, Alejandra was in the final year of a 13-year prison sentence for kidnapping the child. Alberdi listened with interest as Alejandra told her story: “Everything she told me was strange, stranger than fairy tales.”
It was a story full of drama and intrigue. Alejandra was 17 and pregnant when she married her husband Arturo in a fairytale wedding. They always wanted children and Arturo wanted to have a child. But then she miscarried, and then another. Still in her 20s, she underwent IVF. After her third pregnancy, she miscarried again – but she kept this miscarriage a secret and lied about it throughout her pregnancy.
When Alejandra told her story, things changed dramatically. He worked as an administrator at a hospital, where he met a woman, Mayra, who was pregnant but did not want to keep her child. The two women agreed: after giving birth, Mayra gave her child to Alejandra. Five months later, Alejandra arrived at the hospital and took the baby. But something went wrong and the police were called. Alejandra was arrested a few hours later at a nearby hotel and the child was returned to Mayra.
“For two years I could only hear Alejandra’s description of what happened,” says Alberdi, who is from Chile and has been nominated for an Oscar for her 2020 film. Helper Mole. He continued to see Alejandra in a Mexican prison and asked her to write a case report. The project was delayed, but he finally received the court order. “When I saw the evidence, I thought: ‘No, I made a big mistake. I faced reality.”
Alejandra’s story did not match reality. In her testimony, Mayra said she met Alejandra for the first time after giving birth, when Alejandra went to the hospital room posing as a social worker. There was no arrangement between them. Instead, Mayra faced the unspeakable horror of her newborn being stolen from her hospital bed. The evidence was on his side.
Alberdi did not ignore what he was reading. Did he decide to leave the film? “Yes, I didn’t know if I could continue, I was very disappointed.” But the decision to do that must have been difficult, after being with Alejandra for a long time, being so busy with her story? “Andyes. I believed him, but in my gut I only believed the testimony. It was difficult.”
Did he meet Alejandra? “Yes!
Despite the shocking revelation, Alberdi stayed with the film. She says that from the beginning, what she connected with in the story is the problem that put Alejandra on the edge – hiding the miscarriage and pretending that she is still pregnant. “It wasn’t about the crime; it was about the situation. I was very interested in why she pretended to be pregnant. It was a question of cultural pressure on women in Mexico, in Latin America.”
His Netflix series My Son begins with a spectacular reenactment featuring actress Ana Celeste as Alejandra. This story has all the characteristics of a Greek tragedy. But the way Alejandra described it was like a soap opera, over the top and full of melodrama. This is how Alberdi filmed it, showing Alejandra’s version of the scene in the style of a Mexican telenovela. They think they are 80% accurate. And it’s funny in places – silly and silly as Alejandra eats to gain weight and fakes an ultrasound scale. When he told me the story, we were laughing.
It’s funny until it’s not. Alejandra looks dazed and alone, in her baby shower, surrounded by family and friends. “You know, she went to prenatal yoga classes,” says Alberdi. He didn’t just want to do things for others, but he just wanted them to do things according to what he wanted.
Does Alberdi think that Alejandra is beginning to believe his deception? And if you look at old pictures, it’s not a fat woman, it’s a pregnant woman. So it is as if he was mentally pregnant.
In the play, Alberdi reveals Alejandra’s pressure to have a child. When everyone miscarries, they are criticized as a failure. His mother-in-law accuses him: “You should have been more careful.” Her husband Arturo sympathizes with her, but his frustration increases his guilt. Alberdi struggles to say that he is not trying to justify Alejandra’s crime but to understand the story.
Have things changed for women since 2009, when Alejandra lied about being pregnant, I ask. Before the verdict was finalized, Alberdi said: “In Mexico and Latin America, no. At a recent survey in Mexico, the Q&A broke down when the women on the stand stood up to tell their stories of having to give birth and being forced to have a child.”
As the mother of an eight-year-old son, Alberdi says she knows the constant thinking: “Everyone has an opinion about how you’re going to be a mother, always.” She has lost count of the number of times people at film festivals – “mostly men” – have asked her who is looking after her child.
Alberdi’s film falls flat, as it did. In the second part of A Child of My Own, the rebuilding process ends and Alberdi interviews Alejandra and her husband Arturo, who was also arrested and spent two years in prison before being acquitted. He talks to Alejandra’s lawyer, as well as a psychologist. There is also an interview with Mayra, the child’s mother, whose anger and terror are still there. For him, a sentence of 50 years in prison would not have been too long, says Alberdi. “He suffered a lot, and I know he will never forgive Alejandra.”
Alberdi also interviewed Mayda’s son, who is now a healthy and happy young man. He joked that his parents are very protective of him and won’t let him go to parties in case he gets kidnapped. It was a good interview but in the end Alberdi decided not to include it in his film: “I didn’t want to abuse him when he’s not a victim.” His friends don’t know.
A Child of My Own isn’t exactly a Netflix documentary, and Alberdi isn’t the kind of director you’d expect to make. He has built a reputation for the kind of documentaries that premiere at popular film festivals. A Mole Agent follows a spy into a nursing home, revealing the loneliness of the residents. Eternal Remembrance It was a case study of a well-known Chilean family battling Alzheimer’s disease. Alberdi made his fictional debut with the play 2024 In His Place.
I want to know if he watches true crime. “Yes,” Alberdi replies, not full of enthusiasm. He continues diplomatically: “I enjoy it as a viewer, but I don’t connect emotionally.”
The problem, he says, is that we live in an age of superficial judgment and instant opinion. But they don’t have an immediate idea. “The nuance …” he frowns, pulling out his phone to translate a word from Spanish “Nuance! Real crime is different from conflict. Everything is really difficult.”
