maite alberdi

There are true crime documentaries that ask who did it? Others ask why? Maite Alberdi’s unsettling A Child of My Own asks something far more intriguing, especially for female viewers: What kind of society creates the conditions where a lie becomes easier to live than the truth? The Chilean filmmaker, whose exquisite documentaries The Mole Agent and The Eternal Memory demonstrated extraordinary empathy without sacrificing journalistic rigor, turns her lens toward a recent and disturbing child abduction case in Mexico. Yet this is not another sensationalized Netflix true crime binge. It is a nuanced examination, laced with humorous moments, of identity, womanhood, fertility, shame, and cultural expectation. Bottom line: Visually inventive, emotionally layered, and ethically rigorous, A Child of My Own blends the emotional excess of a telenovela with the investigative discipline of documentary filmmaking. The result is one of the year’s most thought-provoking nonfiction films.