“Feeling so much injustice up close shakes your faith in humanity a little. But I understood that I needed to transform that sadness and that anger into a driving force — into my guiding compass throughout so many years of work.”
The film took eight years to make. Was there any point in that process when you doubted the documentary could actually be completed, or that she would be able to emotionally endure the journey?
It was a very difficult process, not only because of the lack of funding from our national film institute, but also because, in production terms, given the sheer amount of work this film required, it was complex. We needed international co-production to move forward, but we didn’t have the support from our own country to keep this structure from crushing us. We learned a lot. It was an enormous challenge and a huge responsibility toward Mailin, her family, and the other victims of abuse by the priest.
On a personal level, feeling so much injustice up close shakes your faith in humanity a little. But I understood that I needed to transform that sadness and anger into a driving force—into my guiding compass throughout so many years of work. So I took on every role I could: camera, production, editing, compositing, writing, directing, even music. There was no money, but we had to keep going; we had to achieve justice above all, to finish Mailin. During editing, it was essential to put my whole self into it in order to create an experience capable of conveying the cost of surviving so many years of trauma, even if doing so came with a tremendous emotional and physical toll.
I also knew that, in order to construct the psychology of someone like Carlos José in the film, I had to remain calm enough to reveal his methods: how he infiltrated each family, how he manipulated them through language, drawing parallels between himself and Jesus, presenting himself as a friend to the children, “the children he never had.” It was crucial to provide concrete evidence of his behavior, because Mailin had been questioned so many times over the years, and yet the evidence was there, clearly visible in the archive. My goal was to present that archival material as irrefutable evidence, so clear that no one could ever again cast doubt on Mailin’s testimony.
Representing that, reviewing the footage again and again, searching for nuances I might have missed, facing this man every day for years of editing, was psychologically very hard. I still feel the emotional impact of having made this film. And although, unlike my first feature Silvia, this wasn’t my own story, in a sense I embraced it as if it were. That’s why the next stage—engaging with an audience capable of transforming the harshness of what happened into a tool for change—is so important.
Mailin reconstructs traumas that even she herself took years to remember. How did you protect her emotional well-being during such intimate filming?
The first time I saw Mailin was on a news program. I saw a woman exposing herself to a very brutal process, driven by an urgent need to protect children. A woman who was being asked about the most morbid aspects of what had happened, yet wasn’t being listened to. So I wrote to her and suggested we get coffee, because I wanted to help her tell her story. I began filming just a few days after our first meeting. I remember pressing “rec,” and at that very moment she began recounting details of the abuse I hadn’t asked about. I think she believed that’s what I wanted, or what I expected from her. And it wasn’t strange—by then, Mailin had spent so much time speaking to the media that, on one hand, she had developed ways of protecting herself, and on the other, she had learned that the most shocking details were what made people pay attention.
That’s when I understood that I needed to truly get to know Mailin before filming anything, and that to do so, I had to step away from the camera. We spent the next year and a half simply building our relationship. We talked for hours, went out dancing, spent Sundays together… we even rang in the New Year side by side. During that time, we spoke a lot about the film, about the process, about everything.
When we finally began filming, it was gradual, giving her the time and space to feel comfortable in front of the camera and to trust the direction we were taking. During that period, I also went to therapy and received psychological guidance. It was crucial to avoid any form of re-victimization. I wanted the process to be reparative, not another way of reliving the trauma she had endured.
Today, I’m grateful to this film for our friendship. I feel fortunate to have taken the time to truly get to know a woman I deeply admire.
How did you balance your role as director with your human role without compromising Mailin’s trust?
Above all, Mailin was—and is—my friend, my family. And I decided to take as many years as necessary to understand the boundaries I should never cross.
I tried to be especially careful, because I knew that when someone has gone through something as traumatic as abuse, and for so many years, it’s very possible that their own boundaries aren’t entirely clear. And since I knew that Mailin wouldn’t tell me directly if something made her uncomfortable, at least in the beginning, I had to be able to see it for myself. Many times, when I sensed that she simply needed to talk, I chose not to film and just stay with her, just talk, like friends—even if I had already rented equipment.
Over the years, I repeated certain more personal questions, and I only included in the film what remained consistent over time. I saw with my own eyes how Mailin grew stronger, how she gained more psychological and emotional tools, and how she was no longer in the same vulnerable place she had been in at the beginning. I constantly reminded myself that I was making a film that would remain forever, and I wanted her to feel proud when watching it. There were things I felt were important to respect and not include.
I also thought a lot about the day Ona, Mailin’s daughter, would eventually see the film. Throughout the editing process, I weighed whether this or that were things she would want to know about her mother years from now. That’s why there are no details about the sexual abuse—because what happened does not define Mailin, even if it forms part of her struggle. That was the main force guiding my artistic decisions: I wanted Ona to see everything her mother achieved despite adversity; the great woman her mother was and is.
The abstract visual flashes and distortions seem to echo the traumatic experience. How did you find this language that fuses archival material, testimony, and abstraction?
That language emerged partly from the need to find an aesthetic form capable of engaging with something as difficult to represent as traumatic memory. I needed the film to offer a gesture of repair. The symbolic, the abstract—used to materialize what cannot be fully put into words—comes from that search: how to translate what can’t quite be said, what memory fragments, distorts, or omits. Trauma is lived through the body, without fully understanding what is happening inside you. That’s why it was essential to load the images and sounds with sensation rather than explain what Mailin must have felt. But it wasn’t easy to find the right form.
Until one day, while I was in an artist residency in Greece, I filmed a shot that is now part of the movie: a road, a passing car, and in the distance a cross and a children’s cemetery. That’s when I understood that I always had to start from a real image and then transform it into something else. Because that’s exactly how trauma works: you can be in an everyday situation, but your mind takes you to see and feel something completely different. The present opens into something much heavier, and suddenly something stronger erupts. From that came the film’s black holes, the red circle, the images that fracture into a denser presence—what lies beneath a given image.
At the same time, while filming the movie, I made two short films that served as experiments in the search for the film’s aesthetic form: Criatura, where I transformed all that sadness, anger, and helplessness into a Creature; and The Spiral, where I sought to merge materials with very different visual qualities—archival footage, digital animation, and hand-drawn images, aiming for cohesion above all. Later, I created an immersive installation called Cortex, exhibited at the MEP museum in Paris this year, also dealing with memory and trauma, which helped me further refine the film’s aesthetic.
I think of this film as a journey—a journey inward, so to speak, into a head, a heart, a dream, a memory. That path is what allowed me to fuse archive, testimony, and abstraction to get closer, even if imperfectly, to what happens inside someone who has lived through something so devastating.
The film shows how the Church protected the priest and how the judicial system clearly failed. Did you take any precautions before confronting and exposing such powerful institutions in Argentina?
Although I did seek legal advice, I’m not sure I was fully aware at the time of the scope of what I was taking on and its implications. I simply wanted to help Mailin, her family, the girls. I needed this film to give them a form of justice, to become a tool—also a bridge for dialogue for other victims of abuse. I knew that until Carlos José was declared guilty, we could not show his face. We needed that verdict as a legal and ethical foundation in order to expose him. Until the Court of Cassation found him guilty, I was very clear that we could not premiere Mailin.
But at its core, the film is about Mailin’s fight: it is a story of transgenerational silence and, ultimately, a story of love between a mother and her daughter. What is exposed is simply the truth of what happened, what is already in the media, what has already been discussed publicly and yet still lacks any real action toward change.
After accompanying Mailin for so many years, what do you hope this film generates in other survivors and within the judicial system?
I want justice, for the State to protect children, and for Carlos José to go to prison—for those who caused so much harm to finally be held accountable. Cases of childhood sexual abuse should not have a statute of limitations; such a thing should no longer exist in any form, especially now that we have enough knowledge to understand how trauma functions in memory. We report when we can, when we are ready to face a brutal system that is physically, emotionally, and financially exhausting. Very few people grasp what it means to sustain a criminal lawyer for years. And what happens to those who don’t have those resources?
I hope the film can open this dialogue, accompany other women, and offer resonance for their own process. I would like the film to serve as a tool for those who have gone through something similar—to recognize themselves, validate what they feel, and, if they want, find the courage to speak or seek help. Real change lies in unity, and I believe that together we can at least challenge a system that is already obsolete. I hope the film helps ensure that these cases stop being dismissed, that impunity stops being the norm, and that the institutions meant to protect victims actually do so.
There are testimonies suggesting that Bergoglio, before becoming Pope, had received complaints or requests for help and did not act, and even accounts saying he discouraged reporting. How did you approach this part of the story, and what place does it occupy in your understanding of Mailin’s history?
It was important not to point fingers solely at individuals but to expose a larger structure that enables people like Carlos José—I think it is essential to understand the sources of power that allow someone like him to operate and be protected. The Church, instead of acting as a force of restraint or repair, ended up functioning as an internal defense mechanism that obstructed civil justice. It was the first institution that could have acted to stop an abuser like him, and it did not.
First, the priest was shielded by the Church to evade the judicial process; and later, even when he faced justice, the institution continued to serve as a screen and benefactor, ensuring that the damage did not stain the structure itself. Although they publicly declared he had been removed from the clergy, in practice they continued protecting him.
Understanding how these two spheres—ecclesiastical and judicial—overlap is key to revealing the void in which victims are left. Neither the Church’s justice nor the civil justice system protects them, and that overlapping of responsibilities ends up buying abusers time until cases expire.
Jueves 5 y 19 de febrero / 20hs
ARTHAUS / Bartolomé Mitre 434. CABA
Director: Abbas Fahdel / 2025
Selecciones: Locarno 2025 (Ganadora Mejor Dirección) – DocLisboa – Tallinn Black Nights – Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival – Viennale – El Gouna Film Festival – Seminici
