Mexican filmmaker Tatiana Huezo has been included in Variety’s list of ‘10 Directors to Watch for 2022.’ Variety’s 10 to Watch series, curated by a team of the magazine’s editors, critics and reporters, spotlights emerging writers, actors, producers, directors, comics and cinematographers.
Born in El Salvador, Huezo was raised in Mexico. She graduated from the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC) and has a Master Degree in Creative Documentary from the Universidad Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. She gained an international reputation with her first feature film, The Tiniest Place / El lugar más pequeño, which screened at more than 80 international festivals.
Her work has been widely recognized around the world and acknowledged by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences with four Ariel awards, among them Best Documentary and Best Director for Tempestad, which premiered in the Forum Section at the 66th Berlinale in 2016. TEMPESTAD was selected by the Mexican Academy to represent Mexico in the Academy Awards and the Goya Awards, where it was nominated to compete for Best Ibero-American film.
For the last few years, she has been teaching independently, giving conferences and imparting workshops in academic contexts like ECAM in Madrid, University of California Santa Barbara, The Green House in Israel, Georgetown University as well as the CCC, among others. Her academic activities also include editing the book “El Viaje, rutas y caminos andados para llegar a otro planeta” produced by the “CCC” and DocumentaMadrid. Last summer, she premiered her first fiction film, Prayers for the Stolen / Noche de fuego at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won a Special Mention in the Un Certain Regard competition. The film was recently shortlisted as Mexico’s official submission for Best International Feature at the 94th Academy Awards.
Liberally adapted from Jennifer Clement's eponymous 2014 novel, Prayers for the Stolen is set in a solitary town nestled in the Mexican mountains, where the girls wear boyish haircuts and have hiding places underground. The film follows Ana and her two best friends as they take over the houses of those who have fled and dress up as women when no one is watching. In their own impenetrable universe, magic and joy abound; meanwhile, their mothers train them to flee from those who turn them into slaves or ghosts. But one day, one of the girls doesn't make it to her hideout in time.
