Daughters of the Forest (Hijas del bosque), the new film by director Otilia Portillo Padua, will have its world premiere in competition for the Dox Award at CPH:DOX (March 11-22, followed by its North American Premiere in the Visions section at the SXSW Film Festival (March 12-18) in Austin, Texas. Check out the trailer for the documentary below.

A story of entanglements—between humans and mushrooms, the visible and the invisible, generational knowledge and modern science—Daughters of the Forest 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.

They seek to expand collective understanding of the fungi with which human existence is intertwined. But the world they know is shifting. Their work is threatened by deforestation, limited opportunities, and ecological loss. Along parallel paths, they share their knowledge and demonstrate how mushrooms offer models of coexistence—helping them confront obstacles and reshape their lives and futures.

This 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 “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” and the principles of Radical Mycology, the film challenges apocalyptic narratives of collapse. Instead, it adopts a mycelial lens—non-linear, interconnected, 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.