A gently complex, yet resolutely compassionate film, and one that is neither fully documentary nor fully fiction, Maite Alberdi’s A Child of My Own (Un hijo propio) shines the spotlight both on the maternal impulse, as well as the social and familial pressures and expectations that come to dominate a Mexican woman’s life.
A rather unique documentary-fiction, this Mexico-shot Netflix film from Chilean filmmaker Alberdi, who made the critically-acclaimed The Mole Agent, spanned a shooting period of three and a half years – from September 2022 to January 2026 – and veers between heartfelt family drama to a story drawn from the crime section of Mexican newspapers. All the time Alberdi’s work manages to strike the right emotional chords.
It is a film very much of two halves. There are hints in the first half of what is to come, but it is to Alberdi’s credit that the film remains engrossing and sympathetic. The early section – which also details the casting process for the film – dwells on the profound desire to become a mother, and the constant pressure from her surroundings that drive Alejandra to fake a pregnancy, and ultimately trigger a media scandal when the lie can no longer be sustained.
Alejandra’s initial story feels sympathetic and even familiar. Married young and full of a desire to start a family, miscarriages blight the early years of her marriage. Pregnant for the third time after taking medical advice she recalls how she was told by family that “this time you have to take it easy. You have to do this, you have to do that. You need to stay at home. In fact, you should stop working.”
She miscarries again, at which point Alejandra’s sense of desperation, as well as the constant pressure from her surroundings, drives her to fake a pregnancy and ‘agree’ with a young pregnant woman who doesn’t want her child to come to an arrangement.
Up to the half-way mark, A Child of My Own is very much about the issues around pregnancy and the pressures of society. But then things switch, and just as the couple look forward to a life with a newborn, the police batter down their door and they become criminals and pariahs.
From this point on, the film is much more about documentary footage, media coverage, interviews from various people involved in the case and material from security videos, while also occasionally dipping back into ‘dramatic’ re-enactment. The film includes plenty of interviews with the subject herself.
As Alejandra is essentially turned into a monster – especially by the Mexican media – and at times struggles to maintain her own story alongside the official narrative, there is a genuine attempt to find a balance between emotional truth and the bluntness of matter-of-fact official reportage.
This is the first project that Chilean director Maite Alberdi has produced in Mexico, alongside producers Sandra Godinez, Carla González Vargas and Maximiliano Sanguine. For the dramatisation of Alejandra’s version of events, actors Ana Celeste Montalvo Peña and Armando Espitia met with the real protagonists of this story in order to achieve the most accurate performances possible.
The film’s clever structure and tone make it both highly watchable and even tense at times, but at heart there is a sense of compassion, with Alberdi delivering a moving and emotional document that may well blur the lines between fact and fiction, but which also feels real and harrowing for all involved.
Mexico, 2026, 96mins
Dir: Maité Alberdi
Producer: Sandra Godinez Vázquez
Production: Gato Grande, Mexiko-Stadt
International sales: Netflix
Scr: Julián Loyola, Esteban Student
Editor: Carolina Siraqyan
With: Ana Celeste, Armando Espitia, Ángeles Cruz, Mayra Sérbulo Cortés, Luisa Guzmán
