The extraordinary story of a Mexican woman who went to prison for faking a pregnancy
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
This feature-length documentary blends artful reconstruction with interviews to tell the extraordinary story of Alejandra Mendoza, a Mexican wife who desperately wanted to have a child. Feeling immense pressure from her in-laws and having suffered multiple miscarriages, Alejandra came up with a plan to fake her pregnancy by taking a baby from a hospital – a plan that would ultimately land her in prison.
The film tracking the whole sorry situation comes from Maite Alberdi – an Oscar nominee for her documentary The Mole Agent (a story about an investigation in a retirement home that inspired the Ted Danson comedy A Man On The Inside). A Child Of My Own is similarly artful. It blurs the line between fact and fiction through its elaborate dramatisation of Alejandra’s actions from her point of view for much of the first half of the film. That part of the proceedings is so well-acted it actually feels just like a movie, and does a great job of placing you inside Ale’s perspective.
In the second half, the film becomes more of a documentary and gives us a deeper understanding of the impact of what Alejandra did on everyone else. (96 minutes)
