Wandering through the forest, foraging for fungi, indigenous mycologists Juli and Lis are literally following in their ancestors’ footsteps while also contributing to scientific knowledge and sustaining their communities. Beautifully filmed, the documentary portrays the mycelium as a living, breathing and talking entity connected to all of the forest – and to all of us.
At the beginning of Daughters of the Forest, the voice of the mycelium can be heard. They say: “We come from a distant point in spacetime. Asleep, we fell onto this immense rock. The lighting woke us up. We come together to weave webs that connect the entire forest. Transforming death into life.”
There are different ways to interpret this voice. A strict materialist might say it is made up. A fictional flourish, representing the filmmaker’s individual opinion. But it could also be interpreted, from another point of view, as an honest translation of what can be heard when one truly, deeply listens.
Then there’s a third view, stating that the two approaches are not mutually exclusive. In other words: why not both?
This is how Juli lives with the forest. She is a trained biologist, specialising in mushrooms, and part of the indigenous Zapotec community in Mexico, quite literally following in her ancestors’ footsteps as she collects specimen in the forest. “Culture and science go hand in hand,” she says. “I can’t set aside what is traditional, as a Zapotec, to focus only on what’s scientific.”
She is not the only indigenous researcher who sees science and tradition as compatible. At the beginning of Otilia Portillo Padua’s documentary, Tlahuica-Pjiekakjoo mycologist Lis shows her printed and bound thesis to her beloved grandmother (who will have passed away by the end of the film). The thesis is titled Ethnomycology in the Tlahuica Pjeikakjoo Region, and Lis explains how it contains all the information she has gathered from her grandmother (one of the last speakers of the Pjiekakjoo language) and other members of their community in its pages, to serve as reference for future generations. Her grandmother is pleased and proud of her. This knowledge was never meant to be hidden or secret.
But it’s not just ancestral knowledge which is at risk of disappearing. Logging is quickly reducing their habitat, including the areas where they would collect mushrooms – Lis mentions 160 different species in her thesis, underlining that “behind every mushroom there is a story. When a person of the community begins to learn, to go back to their traditional knowledge, they are no longer the same person.”
Daughters of the Forest refuses to countenance the division of tradition and modernity, as modern science may help resist modern extractivism. The message here is that there is no reason to separate the two. Not just because local knowledge (for which people “experimented on their own bodies,” Juli reminds us, to learn which fungi are edible and which ones are “loco”) can be vetted by science, but also because science, true science, should have no problem at all with the kinds of holistic thinking central to local tradition. We are all stardust, after all.
The film visually emphasises this continuity between registers of knowledge by approaching Juli’s academic research, working in a darkened room with only her instruments illuminated, as equally sacred. And her professor teaching her, guiding her, and comforting her at moments of difficulty, is just as much part of generational transmission as Juli’s mother and grandmother are at home.
We know the mycelium is connected within the earth through vast tracts of forest, that interdependent mushrooms and plants have symbiotic relationships benefitting both. We know that there can be poisonous and medicinal effects depending on species and preparation, and that the only way for us to eventually survive is to find a harmonious balance in which humans are seen as a part of (and not apart from) the natural world around and within us. This understanding is demonstrated by the light tap on each mushroom picked, to help release its spores before putting it into the basket, ensuring there will be others next time. That is, unless outside forces interfere by extracting and consuming en massewhat should be honoured and tended to individually.
Daughters of the Forest features lush imagery of the forest, wordlessly expressing its interconnectedness through subtle animated effects of glowing spores drifting among the trees, and wonderfully illustrating the careful, guided experience of ingesting a “holy mushroom” (which Juli describes as “like consuming a saint; a living saint”), using soothing psychedelic visuals.
It never feels as if the message, which undeniably is also a political one, is forced upon us. Instead, the beauty of the forest, the hospitality of the families’ lives we are allowed to enter, and the stylistic choices by the filmmakers themselves invite us to realise we are all already part of this one living ecosystem. Invisibly, intimately, inseparably connected to each other, like mushrooms through their mycelium.
Mexico, 2026, 95 minutes
Director Otilia Portillo Padua
Production Sandbox Films, Oscura Producciones
Producers Paula Arroio, Elena Fortes, Otilia Portillo Padua
International sales Paula Arroio, Elena Fortes
Script Otilia Portillo Padua
Cinematography Martín Boege
Editing Lorenzo Mora Salazar
Sound design Javier Umpierrrez
Sound Glenda Charles, Erick Ruiz Arellano, Liliana Villaseñor, Rodrigo Frutos
