Canadian Premiere
In Daughters of the Forest, two Indigenous mycologists, Eliseete and Julieta, work to preserve generations of traditional knowledge about fungi and the forests that sustain them. In Mexico State’s Lagunas de Zempoala National Park, Zapotec student Eliseete learns from her abuela and a circle of women who have long foraged for mushrooms. In Oaxaca’s Central Valleys, biologist Julieta considers furthering her studies to help safeguard her region’s knowledge of flora, but doing so would distance her from her young son for two years. Around them, deforestation and illegal logging threaten both the forests and the knowledge they contain.
Otilia Portillo’s spellbinding and immersive sci-fi documentary takes an unexpected path into the entanglements between humans and mushrooms, the visible and invisible, and ancestral knowledge and modern science. Portillo gives fungi an otherworldly visual language, making their strange forms and hidden networks feel like portals into another world. Throughout, the film’s sense of wonder remains grounded in the women’s deep connection to the forest, where scientific research and ancestral knowledge coexist.
Content Considerations: Use of mushrooms for traditional Indigenous methods, presentation of psychedelic experiences
Audience Award: Visions, CPH:DOX 2026
Julia Dolores Raimundo, Eliseete Ramírez Carbajal, Cristina Carbajal, Sergio Ramírez, Griselda Bautista Hernández
Mexico
2026
In Spanish, Zapotec, Tlahuica, and Mazatec with English subtitles
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Jessica Harrop, Caitlin Mae Burke, Maxyne Franklin
Producer
Paula Arroio, Elena Fortes, Otilia Portillo
Screenwriter
Otilia Portillo Padua
Cinematography
Martín Boege AMC
Editor
Lorenzo Mora Salazar AMEE
Original Music
Hannah Peel
Otilia Portillo Padua
Otilia Portillo Padua is a Mexican film director whose works include Three Voices (2012), which screened at a number of international festivals including SXSW, Ambulante, Morelia, DocsMX, among others; and Birders (2019), a short documentary she directed and wrote for Netflix. Portillo Padua is a recipient of the One House Filmmaker Fund and the Mycoskie – UC Berkeley Psychedelic Documentary Fellowship. She has received grants from Mexico’s Ministry of Culture, the Mexican Institute for Cinematography, and the Sundance Institute. Her recent feature Daughters of the Forest (2026) won the First Look prize at the Hot Docs Forum.
Filmography: Llegando al cielo todo se refleja (2006); Diario a tres voces (2012)
Photo by Jesse Sabatie
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Image: © Mirabel Pictures
