BUENOS AIRES (ARGENTINA)
Variety [Los Angeles, CA]
November 14, 2025
By Rafa Sales Ross
One day, almost a decade ago, Argentinian filmmaker María Silvia Esteve (“Silvia”) turned on the television and saw a woman talk about her fight for justice against the priest who sexually abused her and many others for years. Her name was Mailin Gobbo. Esteve immediately felt she was someone who could help her tell her story. The two met for coffee, the result of that meeting and eventual friendship becoming IDFA competition title “Mailin.”
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Speaking with Variety ahead of the festival, the filmmaker recalls first seeing Mailin crying on television as the interviewer asked her intrusive details about her abuse at the hands of her local priest and family friend Carlos Eduardo José. Mailin was a key witness in the legal case against José, who was cleared of all charges in 2021 because of Argentina’s statute of limitations.
“I remember she was crying, and I felt the person who was interviewing her was not really listening,” Esteve recalls. “Mailin was exposing herself emotionally because she really wanted this man to be in prison. She also had a daughter now and realized this man could also be abusing other children just like her. I felt Mailin needed to be listened to, and I felt I could help her in a sense.”
The director says the film took eight years to make because it involved a lengthy process to gain Mailin’s trust and friendship. Only with this complicity between the two could Esteve make the film she envisioned, not one about the sensationalism of the case but a story about motherhood, survival and trauma.
“It was a process of great patience,” says Esteve. “There were times when I rented equipment and realized I just needed to let her talk, not film. She just needs me to be a friend. I tried to respect those limits because when you go through so many years of abuse, you don’t have clear limits. That’s why it took such a long time.”
Was there any trepidation in facing an institution as powerful as the Catholic church in Argentina? Not to Esteve, as she felt her documentary wasn’t necessarily an indictment of the church itself, but of systems of power that protect and shelter sexual abusers. “The judicial system also failed Mailin,” she emphasizes. “But this is a man who was very much protected by the church. The church even helped him hide. He continued to receive a salary from the church, his social security was given by the church. Today, he’s free and on the run because there was a whole ecosystem that helped him do so.”
“At the same time, when Mailin put in her first claim, the person in charge was the man who would eventually become Pope Francis,” adds the director, referring to the magnitude of the case. “So it was quite complex. We knew that, at least in terms of justice, that man was getting what he was getting because there was a structure protecting him.”
Commenting on the visual flares of the film, which intersperse courtroom footage, testimonials and intimate captures of Mailin’s family life with bright abstract sequences, Esteve says it came from a creative process in terms of how to visually portray trauma. “The idea was to illustrate the fairytale with 2D animation, but it wasn’t working because the animation was taking the viewer outside of the film,” she says. “There were so many different materials within the film, so the challenge was trying to seek a form that could merge them all.”
The director credits her short films with giving her the space to experiment with form, stating she even blended the audio from the courtroom and of Mailin’s father’s frustrated screams in her Locarno-winning short “Creature.” “The shorts also helped me in seeking financing, so I could show people what was actually possible.”
“I thought, in the end, that’s how trauma works,” she adds of the film’s visuals. “When you go through trauma, you’re in the present tense, but suddenly something triggers an anguish that surpasses your body. That’s when I realized the images had to deform and open into something else.”
The emotionally heavy process of making “Mailin” took a toll on the filmmaker. She then began working on her first fiction project, “Fauces,” as a form of productive escapism. The project is inspired by “Creature,” with Esteve saying it is a film that “talks about traumatic memory and speaks about loss and, in a way, motherhood.”
“In a way, I’m revisiting the same things over and over again, but the questions are different,” she adds. “I’m currently reaching the first draft of the film, and it’s a project that has helped me keep my compass stable to make ‘Mailin.’”
As for returning to IDFA, where she premiered her 2018 debut “Silvia,” Esteve says it’s “important to recognize spaces that take a leap of faith on filmmakers from day one.” “ ‘Mailin’ went through the festival’s entire ecosystem. IDFA has been absolutely unconditional and helped me feel like I had control and that things would go according to my vision.”
“Mailin” is produced by María Silvia Esteve for HANA Films, in co-production with Alejandra López for Ikki Films and Cristina Hanes and Radu Stancu for deFilm. The Party Film Sales handles sales.