A visceral exploration of memory in the wake of trauma
A bedtime story turns into a haunting avant-garde nightmare as Mailin confronts her past for the sake of her daughter’s childhood. Over years of collaboration, director María Silvia Esteve followed Mailin Gobbo while she and many other women sought justice for the sexual abuse they endured at the hands of a Catholic priest and family friend. Blending documentary and storytelling, Mailin draws on home movies, archival material, and courtroom audio to build an aesthetically innovative portrait of memory and survival.
María Silvia Esteve foregrounds Mailin’s own agency in the storytelling, allowing survival to emerge not as a matter of endurance but as an active reclamation of the past. A formally mesmerizing and urgent film that moves deftly between reportage and visual art.
“Transforming real-life trauma into a kind of avant-garde horror film, María Silvia Esteve’s remarkable documentary Mailin inhabits a mesmerising liminal zone between factual reportage and high-art aesthetics.”
Stephen Dalton The Film Verdict 17/11/2025
María Silvia Esteve
María Silvia Esteve is an Argentine director, producer, and founder of the female-led audiovisual collective HANA Films. Her short film The Spiral (2022) was screened as part of the New Directors/New Films series at MoMA as well as at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. Recipient of numerous awards, including the Pardino d’Oro for Criatura (2021) at Locarno, her work has been recognized by the Association of Spanish Cinematographers. Mailin is her second feature-length film.
