A Child of My Own

What happens when the wish to become a mother collides with a lie too big to take back?

A CHILD OF MY OWN is the new documentary from filmmaker Maite Alberdi.

It begins with something achingly familiar: after a series of miscarriages and mounting pressure to become a mother, Alejandra fakes a pregnancy.

The lie grows—until a baby is taken from a Mexico City hospital, and the story becomes a scandal across the country.

What follows isn’t a simple true-crime reckoning.

Moving between staged recollection and documentary testimony, Alberdi draws us into one woman’s version of events—then gradually complicates it with other voices, other truths, and another mother’s pain.

The film asks not just what happened, but how grief, shame, family expectations, and a system that failed to intervene can reshape our understanding of the truth itself.

Alberdi, the two-time Academy Award-nominated director of THE MOLE AGENT and THE ETERNAL MEMORY, turns an extraordinary headline into an intimate human inquiry—one that resists easy judgment and asks how our perception of another person can change over time.

Join us for a conversation with Maite Alberdi about A CHILD OF MY OWN on INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, starting now.

After experiencing multiple miscarriages and the societal shame that comes with it, recently married Alejandra fakes a pregnancy. What starts as an elaborate lie turns into a complex charade that threatens to upend her life and relationship, and ultimately unleashes a media scandal that shakes the entire country. In A Child of My Own, Oscar nominated documentary Filmmaker Maite Alberdi takes a uniquely intimate look at the incident through the words of those who lived it, examining the crushing weight of societal expectations, the elusive nature of truth, and the enduring power of family.