Esperanza mía

Plot

Julia Albarracín (Lali Espósito) is a girl from La Merced, a small town. Her adoptive mother, Blanca, used to work in a factory. She was contaminated in her job and dies some time later . Before dying, she gives Julia the proof of the contamination that killed her. The factory owner knew about this, and started to hunt her so she could not give the proof to the police. Desperately needing to get away, she boarded a random bus that was going to Buenos Aires. She sought the help of her mom's old friend in Buenos Aires, Concepción(Ana Maria Picchio), who had become a nun and is also Santa Rosa Convent's superior nun . To give her cover, she gave Julia a nun's vestments, and introduced her to the other nuns as a novice. She also uses an alias, Sister Esperanza. Esperanza meets sister Clara (Gabriela Toscano), who becomes her best friend and advisor, but what she doesn't know is that Clara is her biological mother. Clara realizes that Esperanza is her daughter, but becomes afraid of telling her the truth because she is afraid of losing Esperanza forever. Esperanza also meets the young priest Tomás(Mariano Martinez), and becomes friends with him; eventually, she will fall in love with him but she knows that her love is impossible. Tomás also develops feelings for her but tries to hide them because of his position as priest. But both of them are unaware that Tomás and his brother, Máximo (Tomás Fonzi), lead the business that killed her mother.

Production

The production was halted on April 18, 2015, because of a labor strike of all Argentine actors, decided by the Asociación Argentina de Actores. Producer Adrián Suar criticized it, as the program had an expensive location shooting prepared for that day.

The telenovela will have cameos of other actors. Valeria Lynch played a "rocker" nun, who became friend with Esperanza. Jimena Barón, Esperanza's cousin and best advisor, who composes commercial jingles. She joined the cast during a controversial break up with soccer player Daniel Osvaldo. She was planning by then to move to Europe, but eventually gave up those plans and stayed in Argentina. As a result, she asked to join the cast again.

Reception

As Lali Esposito has a big fanbase, the program was presented with a show in La Plata. It included a show by Luciano Pereyra, the author of a production theme. The show soon became a trending topic on Twitter.

El Trece had good ratings in the prime time in 2015, thanks to the Turkish telenovela Binbir Gece (translated in Argentina as "Las mil y una noches"). Esperanza mía kept important ratings as well.

Federico Kunz, a priest from the San Luis province, started an online petition asking for the removal of the program. He considers that the story of a romantic love between a priest and a fake nun is insulting for religious people. As the main characters would eventually kiss at some point, he considers that it would be insulting to clerical celibacy as well. The petition started on March 9, and have more than 5,000 supporters. The TV channel El Trece is not concerned about the petition, and kept producing new episodes.

Other media

Mariano Martínez reported in a radio interview that there are projects to make a theater adaption of the telenovela, during the 2015 winter season.

The actresses of the telenovela appeared in the first program of Showmatch in 2015, characterized as the monks, and made a musical show. They made similar musicals in the program afterwards.

International releases

The series was released in Chile in December 2016 by Chilevision. Although the original series is in Spanish, it was dubbed by local actors. This proved to be controversial among the Chilean audiences, so Chilevision clarified that the intention was to remove the Argentine local slang, as the jokes may be otherwise difficult to be understood by non-Argentine audiences. This dubbing was criticized because the voices got out of synch with the action, and because the lead voice actress would lack the humorous tone of Lali Espósito.

Cast

Awards