My next documentary will explore the Spanish “baby-snatching”, a common practice in certain hospitals after the Civil War (1936-1939).

Children used to be stolen from imprisoned women in order to find other families for them. Babies were taken from unmarried and young women from vulnerable families. The mothers were told that their children had died, but the corpses were not shown and the documents were falsified.

After the dictatorship, the “baby-snatching” was illegal but still in practice in certain hospitals until the 90’s. Today, many mothers and siblings are looking for their families and many women organisations have been created without any kind of public funding.

This feature documentary will stress the trauma of all these women that were told their baby was dead and spent their whole life in a constant search. In addition, universal narratives will cross this motherhood line, such as sisterhood and the status of historical memory in Spain.

This invaluable opportunity at UnionDocs will allow me to put the spotlight on this forgotten reality, to strengthen my artistic approach by having a mentor and constant support from my documentary professionals and peers. I invite you to be a part of this journey by making any contribution, no matter the amount, it will make a massive impact in my experience.

Thank you so much for believing in my vision, supporting independent filmmaking and for helping me to be one step closer to exploring this reality.

Laura Esteban is an award-winning Galician documentary filmmaker based in London. She studied BA (HONS) Audiovisual Communication at the University of Santiago de Compostela and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.
After working as a self-shooting director in Barcelona, she moved to London, where she decided to focus entirely on the path she had always been passionate about: documentary. She completed her MA Documentary Film at the London College of Communication of the University of the Arts London, where she made her first documentary: ‘Daughters of the Sea’. This short documentary was highly commended in the Grierson Awards 2022, nominated in 14 international festivals, winning 4 awards, and commissioned by the Council of A Coruña (Spain), within its education department.
Her films are non-fictions which are centred on women, character-driven stories that unfold different realities across the globe, from Japan to Spain. From showing short format docs in Japan to sexist discrimination in Galicia, Laura is interested in the female condition and the boundaries between reality and fiction.

About the Summer Documentary Labs:

The Uniondocs Summer Documentary Lab are a program for a select group of media artists from the US and abroad. Based in one of NYC’s most exciting neighborhoods, Ridgewood, Queens, the Summer Labs offer a platform for participants to spend the Summer making strides and clarify the creative direction of their projects to attract the potential team members, funders and producers they need to find their way to the finish. An intensive schedule of screenings, open seminar discussions, weekly industry “field trips,” and inspiring artist visits from some of the most dynamic voices across the field of documentary, the SUMMER DOCUMENTARY LABS are tightly structured environments that bring participants into a select group of emerging filmmakers to get challenged and encouraged to think through every aspect of their works-in-progress.

Drawing inspiration from across disciplines, this intensive program should not be mistaken for an industrial, journalistic, or traditional documentary training. Scholar Scott MacDonald highlighted in The New York Times that, “UnionDocs has a healthy sense that the older definitions of what constitutes ‘experimental’ cinema and what constitutes ‘documentary’ are up for grabs.” Much emphasis is placed on workshopping lab participants’ writing about their projects as a way to both clarify the creative direction and attract potential team members, funders and producers. Participants receive focused, honest and helpful feedback on their project proposals from prominent documentary artists and industry experts.

The Research and Development Lab in August is for projects preparing to go into production. Filmmakers are developing their conceptual approaches to their work and are aiming to strengthen their proposals and sharpen their creative ideas, as they approach the production stage and plan for the entire process all the way through to distribution.