A Child of My Own: Mexico's Fake-Pregnancy Baby Kidnap
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- "A Child of My Own" is Maite Alberdi's Netflix documentary about Eleonor Alejandra Marín Mendoza, a Mexican woman serving a 13-year sentence for faking a pregnancy after a miscarriage and snatching a newborn in 2009 to satisfy her husband Arturo's desire for a son.
- Alberdi spent two years believing Alejandra's story — that single mother Mayra had agreed to give her the baby — until court transcripts revealed Mayra testified they met only after Alejandra posed as a social worker on the hospital ward to walk out with the child.
- The film dramatizes Alejandra's melodramatic account in a Mexican telenovela style, starring Ana Celeste, with Alberdi estimating about 80% accuracy, and later includes real interviews with Alejandra, Arturo, the trial judge, and Mayra herself.
- Alberdi chose to omit an interview with the kidnap victim — now a healthy teenager — to avoid stigmatizing her at school by defining her by the incident.
- Alberdi said the pressure on women in Mexico and Latin America to marry and have children hasn't eased since 2009, recounting how a recent Mexican screening Q&A derailed into women sharing their own fertility struggles.
- Alberdi is a Chilean filmmaker whose 2020 documentary "The Mole Agent" earned an Oscar nomination; her other recent work includes "The Eternal Memory" and her 2024 fiction debut "In Her Place."
Why it matters: Alberdi's mid-production twist — discovering her subject's account didn't match evidence — reframes the film from a Mexican kidnapping story into a study of how social pressure around motherhood drove a woman to lie, with Q&A reactions at Mexican screenings suggesting that pressure hasn't eased since 2009.
