Otilia Portillo Padua’s Sci-Fi Documentary ‘Daughters of the Forest’ Makes North American Premiere at SXSW

Following its world premiere in competition for the Dox Award at Danish film festival CPH:DOX, director Otilia Portillo Padua’s vibrant new sci-fi documentary, Daughters of the Forest (Hijas del Bosque), will have its North American premiere in the Visions section at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.

Set deep in the forests of Mexico, Daughters of the Forest is a story of entanglements—between humans and mushrooms, the visible and the invisible, and generational knowledge and modern science. The film follows Lis and Juli, two scientifically trained young women from Indigenous communities that have long lived in symbiosis with the diverse mushroom ecologies of Oaxaca and Mexico State.

The pair seeks to expand collective understanding of the fungi with which human existence is intertwined, but they know the world is shifting. Their work as mycologists is faces looming threats of deforestation, limited opportunities, and ecological loss. Along parallel paths, Lis and Juli share their knowledge and demonstrate how mushrooms offer models of coexistence—helping them confront obstacles and reshape their lives and futures.

The immersive and vibrant sci-fi documentary takes viewers on an unexpected, at times speculative journey into the realities of two Indigenous communities and the fungi in the forest they inhabit, inviting audiences to reconsider the boundaries between human and non-human worlds.

Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, a book that tells the story of human origin by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon of domination, and the principles of Radical Mycology, a grassroots organization dedicated to increasing awareness of fungi’s cultural and ecological significance, the film challenges apocalyptic narratives of collapse. Instead, it adopts a mycelial lens—non-linear, interconnected, and collaborative—foregrounding a cinema rooted in reciprocity among foragers, Indigenous communities, scientists, and the more-than-human world.

By illuminating the work of women who bridge scientific training and ancestral wisdom, and with a luscious visual narrative, Daughters of the Forest counters narratives of extraction with those of community, process, and care, suggesting that the future remains unwritten and depends on our capacity for imagination and interdependence.

Daughters of the Forest is set to premiere on Friday, March 13, at the Violet Crown Cinema as part of the 2026 lineup at SXSW in Austin, Texas, running March 12 to 18.