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Finding Other Ways to Tell Stories: An Interview With Otilia Portillo, Director of HIJAS DEL BOSQUE

Our development as human beings is often framed through a duality: the interplay between inherited, traditional knowledge and Western knowledge. But what if we were to question this divide and examine how these different ways of knowing relate to one another—through something as everyday as mushrooms? This is one of the reflections that emerges from the documentary Hijas del bosque, directed by Otilia Portillo.

During the 24th Morelia International Film Festival, we had the opportunity to speak with Otilia Portillo about the exploratory process behind the making of this film.

FICM: Where did your interest in mushrooms—and in making Hijas del bosque more generally—come from?

Otilia Portillo: I find myself returning to this question often, and it’s important to do so, because this framework suggests that there are other ways to tell stories.

It stems from an essay by the writer Ursula K. Le Guin—who is primarily known for her science fiction—in which she discusses the very structure of storytelling. She reflects on how, as a grandmother and a woman, many of the science fiction stories she encountered—centered on heroes—did not resonate with her or reflect her own life experience; she simply wasn’t very interested in those kinds of heroic narratives.

She draws on an idea from the anthropologist Elizabeth Fisher, who posits that the first human tool was a container—a receptacle, something used to carry water. This is why the essay is titled "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction." Le Guin says, "These are the kinds of stories that interest me: 'carrier bag' stories."

For me, the idea of ​​a story as a container—rather than as an arrow (which is how we archetypally structure narratives, often framing them as a linear arc or a projectile)—presented an intriguing challenge. It suggests a narrative that is woven, or perhaps rhizomatic—something far more organic, reminiscent of plants and the botanical world. How is the world interconnected? It’s not… well, life isn’t like an arrow, is it? Life is a series of things that just happen.

Starting with the concept of a "container," Paola and I had talked about mushroom foragers—though only in a casual, anecdotal way, without really knowing anything about mushrooms themselves.

This coincided with the arrival of COVID, just as the "mushroom boom" was beginning. You could say mushrooms were being hailed as the new antidepressant. Around the same time, Merlin Sheldrake’s book, Entangled Life, was published. This only fueled the trend further. Amidst this mushroom craze, I found myself asking: "Wait—what about the foragers? What about the women who have held an ancient relationship with mushrooms for generations? Where do they fit in? Where are they in this landscape—and in this body of knowledge?"

Thanks to the professors at the Colegio de Postgraduados, who provided us with a series of introductory lessons, we began to understand these incredibly sophisticated organisms—entities that are non-linear and challenge many of our preconceived notions about life, how it emerges, and how it transforms.

Following the trail of the mushrooms, we discovered the stories of these women—specifically, students at the college whose grandmothers and mothers were foragers, yet who themselves have pursued formal academic studies within the Western tradition.

It was fascinating to observe this interaction—to see how these two worlds converged within these individuals, generally without any sense of conflict. That’s the long version of how we arrived at this story: the basket leads us to the mushrooms, and the mushrooms lead us to these young women.

FICM: In a way, it blends this ancestral wisdom with contemporary knowledge about mushrooms. How did you seek to establish a dialogue between these two worlds—these two forms of knowledge—without placing one above the other, or making it seem as though one were superior to the other? The very dynamics of academia tend to be perceived as the norm—the established standard. What was that process like?

Otilia Portillo: And positioning itself as superior, right? There’s also the whole issue—for instance, when scientific journals involve local people, yet fail to cite those very individuals who provided access to these species.

It’s a matter of extractivism—something that occurs not only in the work of documentarians but also within academia. From the very beginning, we were extremely careful about this. We also had the precedent of María Sabina—a significant case in the world of mycology—where knowledge was extracted and disseminated, ultimately leading to a complete transformation of a community. There were many such cautionary tales that we knew we had to be mindful of.

Furthermore, the truth is that Lizy [Elissete Ramirez Carbajal] and Juli [Julieta Serafina Amaya] are individuals who operate across multiple knowledge systems simultaneously, without these systems being in opposition to one another. For example, for Juli, the "sacred mushroom" is a sacred being that can also be looked at under a microscope and subjected to taxonomy—which involves measuring and dissecting it. For someone like me—rational, external, and Westernized—it might seem as though those two things cannot coexist. 

In Liz’s case, there was an intuitive identification of fungi long before anyone called it "taxonomy" or "classification." Her grandmother already had 200 types of mushrooms classified in her mind. It is an immense body of knowledge that would have been lost had Liz not published it in a book. Very few people know so many species—and their original names, in the Tlahuica Pjiekakjoo language.

There was no contradiction between these different worlds. For someone like me—highly rationalized and trained in a strictly Western educational system—it might seem that science and other forms of knowledge are incompatible. Perhaps that was the greatest lesson for me: a lesson in humility. There are things I do not understand, yet I find myself trying to impose a mindset that is, in fact, entirely subjective.

FICM: In that sense, how did you approach the communities and the family, ensuring that the process didn’t feel like an external or "exoticizing" imposition of knowledge?

Otilia Portillo: It was actually thanks to the doctors. I always mention them because it was through this network of doctors—who had spent years working with communities and students across many regions of Mexico, focusing on fungi—that a foundation of trust was built. That is why I always want to highlight the *Colegio de Postgraduados* and these academic doctors; they go far beyond just working with their students.

In fact, in the film, you can see a very personal relationship between the teachers and their students. I even remember once, when we screened a work-in-progress version abroad, someone in the audience asked, "Why are they hugging each other?" And I said: “Because the teacher-student relationship in these spaces is very intense.” It’s an extended family.

So, it’s thanks to them—they became not just mediators for everything, but also advisors throughout the entire process, right up to the present day. It’s like having an advisory council that includes a Mixe scientist, Dr. Olivia; Dr. Magda, who is from Texcoco; and Dr. Jesús.

Everything goes through them—every aspect of how we operate—because each community we work with has its own distinct way of functioning and managing its formal work processes. Every entity is unique. So, it is thanks to them and their many years of field experience that we—essentially—always approach things through them.

FICM: I’m struck by how nature—the world of fungi—seems to be a character in its own right within the story; you portray it in a very dreamlike way. What was that process like? How did you arrive at the decision to depict fungi from that perspective? What were your points of reference?

Otilia Portillo: From the very beginning, there was this idea of ​​giving presence to the non-human—of granting it subjectivity—by using the tools of cinema to provide it with a visual and auditory perspective. So, that was always there.

However, during the process, I discovered that saying, “I want to give the fungus a point of view,” is one thing, but actually doing it is another. It took many attempts to figure out how the fungus would see, hear, and feel.

Later, toward the end, we gave it a voice. Throughout the entire film—and the entire editing process—the fungi didn’t have a voice, per se. They had a presence; they served as transitions between scenes, giving everything a somewhat “mycelial” quality. Mycelium is the tissue—the body—of the fungus that exists beneath the ground.

The decision to include a voice came much later, and we had to make it very deliberately, as we realized it risked anthropomorphizing the fungus. On the other hand, we considered the common notion that the human voice carries a great deal of emotion.

Ultimately, we asked ourselves: “What if we keep a human voice but apply a non-human treatment to it?” This introduces a sense of plurality. That’s why it ends up sounding like a chorus of murmurs—and they speak in Zapotec, because, in the end, the fungi spoke to Juli.

Whether or not you believe they actually speak reflects whether or not we have learned to listen; in the end, the fungi are speaking to Juli herself. Juli even told us as much at one point. When we asked, “But do they *really* speak?” she replied, “They really do speak.”

Giving them a voice was part of that exploration, but the formal cinematic investigation into their point of view had been there from the start. It was a long process to arrive at the final form—which, in the end, manifests as a series of collages, or composite images. We would record one part, then another, and then integrate them—incorporating elements like particles, specific points of view, or even burying the camera. There were many attempts, and, truth be told, a great many of them failed. I want to emphasize that, in any experimental process, what you attempt often doesn’t work. We wanted the film to feel like a fungus.

FICM: And finally, what would you like the audience in Morelia who watch the documentary to understand? What message would you like them to take away after seeing the film?

Otilia Portillo: In this landscape and scenario of desolation, where the figures that most permeate the media today are very antagonistic towards the dystopia that the future presents, what inspires us most is that you see the stories of these women. We want them to see how these women transformed their own lives and their surroundings using only what they had at hand—utilizing something as seemingly small, yet simultaneously as vast, as a fungus.

We would be very inspired if this led us to rethink who we want to follow; who are the heroes who will guide us to imagine another future.