ESCLUSIVA: Le prime immagini del documentario di María Silvia Esteve Mailin #adessonews

Argentinian director-producer María Silvia Esteve is now supervising the post-production of her new documentary, Mailin, Cineuropa has learnt. Esteve debuted with Silvia, premiered at IDFA in 2018, a documentary feature that snagged prizes at DocAviv, DocLisboa and the Havana Film Festival. In 2021, her short film Criatura won the Pardino d’oro at Locarno. In 2022, she presented The Spiral in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight.

Mailin narrates a fairy tale that gradually reveals itself to be a metaphor for the title character’s childhood. Her past and present begin to converge as the trial of priest Carlos José, who abused Mailin for 15 years, unfolds. It’s a fate suffered by 35 other women, whose cases the Argentinian legal system has declared to have expired. Now, Mailin carries the burden of defending their voices alongside her own. But she puts her anguish aside for her five-year-old daughter, Ona, who knows nothing about the battle she is waging.

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Thus, Mailin goes back in time and tries to recover memories fragmented by trauma; images that shatter and freeze. And in the exercise of remembering, the three women in the family – Mailin, her sister Michelle and her mother Monica – unearth words unsaid. Guilt re-emerges as they blame themselves for not seeing what was happening. And although Mailin has broken her silence to protect other children from Carlos José, she faces a wall of corruption that props up the justice system. While the Church protects the priest, and the state turns its back on her, Mailin knows that there is nothing to be done but to keep on fighting.

The protagonists are Mailin Gobbo, Michelle Gobbo, Ona Albertella, Mónica Villafañe and Augusto Pablo Gobbo. It was shot with a skeleton crew made up of DoP Andrea Cabrera and the director herself, who also takes care of the cinematography, editing and sound.

“After seven years of taking the time to earn her trust, to see her daughter grow up in front of the camera, and being accepted into her family, I can say that I know Mailin. I met the courage and the fragility of a warrior inside of an ‘adult child’ who, by playing with her daughter Ona, remembers small fractions of a youth brutally interrupted,” Esteve tells Cineuropa.

“Thus, the film is an attempt to reach a memory that is unreachable, yet necessary to face, since Mailin’s search for her memory is her means to reach her own motherhood, her own self. And in a world where the most terrible and beautiful things happen, Mailin emerges to rewrite a story, and to give her daughter the chance of a childhood the strength of new beginnings.”

Zooming in on the current state of the project, she explains: “Filming wrapped in Argentina in September, after eight years. The project is currently part of the MFI Workshop, and will be showcased in the WIP session of the Guadalajara Film Festival. In terms of funding, so far, the film has received the IDFA Bertha Fund Classic for Production, the Metropolitan Fund of Arts of Buenos Aires, as well as backing from the InMaat Foundation, SCAM – Brouillon d’un rêve Documentaire, the Aide au co-développement international CICLIC and the Romanian National Film Center. More recently, Mailin also received the CNC’s Aide aux Cinémas du Monde, while we advance in conversations with ARTE – La Lucarne for a potential pre-sale.

“The final cut is slated to be delivered by the end of December. Further post-production will be done in Athens and Bucharest in January and February next year. And we’re in search of broadcasters, sales agents and distributors. The project also includes an immersive video installation, called CORTEX, which I’ll be presenting at the MEP Museum in Paris on 5 December,” Esteve concludes.

Previously, Mailin scooped the 2/35 Post-Production Award at this year’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, plus the Award for Best Film and a Special Mention at Conecta’s FIDOCS First Cut. Moreover, French sales agent The Party Film Sales handed it its accolade for the project with the highest international potential at Visions du Réel, where it also scooped the TËNK Post-Production Award.

Budgeted at €430,000, Mailin is being produced by Argentina’s HANA Films, and co-produced by Romania’s deFilm and France’s Ikki Films. The doc is slated for release in 2025.