Source: Entertainment Weekly

No One Saw Us Leave, a Spanish-language limited series on Netflix, chronicles the years-long struggle between a mother and the man who tore her family apart.

Tessa Ia leads the series as Valeria Goldberg, a young woman in a Jewish-Mexican community who makes a mistake that shatters her world and forces her into a desperate fight to find her missing children.

While the characters and story feel vividly real, fans may wonder just how much of Valeria’s journey actually comes from real life. With all five episodes now streaming, here’s a look at the true events that inspired No One Saw Us Leave.

Set in 1968, No One Saw Us Leave introduces audiences to Valeria, a woman trapped in an arranged marriage to Leo Saltzman (Emiliano Zurita), the son of a powerful businessman, in a Jewish-Mexican community in Mexico.

According to the logline, Valeria “cracks under the pressure” of family expectations and makes one disastrous mistake that gives Leo and his father the excuse they need to destroy her life and “tear her away from her children.”

“When Valeria realizes that her children are gone, she enlists the aid of Elías (Ari Brickman), an ex-Mossad agent turned P.I., to help her track them down,” reads the synopsis. “As Valeria and Elías chase Leo and the kids across the world, her desperation is compounded by her in-laws’ attempts to turn their shared community against her.”

Yes, No One Saw Us Leave is inspired by a real kidnapping in the late 1960s. The limited series draws heavily from Tamara Trottner’s 2024 memoir Nadie nos vio partir, in which she recounts how she and her brother were abducted by their father as retaliation against their mother.

While the memoir presents the story from Trottner’s point of view, the Netflix series shifts the focus to Valeria and her years-long effort to reunite with her children.

“The table is round. Made of mahogany and barely big enough to hold a gray rotary phone,” reads the book’s haunting opening passage. “I look up; at this age, you have to look up to see anyone. My brother and I anxiously listen as our father speaks into the receiver. My gaze shifts from one to the other while I struggle to understand what’s happening. I just turned five. This day will mark the end of my childhood.”

Trottner revealed to Chilango in 2022 that on her 5th birthday, she and her brother were abruptly taken from their home by their father without warning and kept apart from their mother for years.

During that time, their father moved them to several different countries as a way to keep their whereabouts hidden from their mother. But their mother refused to give up, doing anything and everything she could (including hiring private investigators) to find them.

In a 2023 interview with De Dientes Para Adentro, Trottner reflected on the ordeal, explaining that her mother prefers to call it a “trip” instead of a kidnapping.

At first, she explained, she and her brother really believed they were going on a vacation, but they sensed something was wrong when their questions about their mother, their dog, their school, and their home went unanswered.

Where is Tamara Trottner now?

Trottner recently published a new book Pronunciaré sus nombres, which serves as a prequel to her memoir.

In an interview with Librotea, she explained that the novel explores the lives of her grandparents, “who were forced to leave their home in Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20th century due to war, persecution, and violence.”

“Nadie nos vio partir isn’t about them,” she said, adding that she felt her readers needed to know about those who came before her and her family. “We need to know … where they came from, what those families were like, so we can understand why everything that happened happened.”

She noted that those who read her memoir were eager to learn more about her grandparents’ story, who were only briefly mentioned. That curiosity eventually became the spark that inspired her to write the new book.

Trottner has continued to open up about her childhood abduction and its impact on her life. In her conversation with Chilango, she spoke lovingly of her mother, describing her as an “awesome mom” and saying she feels “so lucky” to have her in her life.

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