Deep in Mexico’s forests, two mycologists seek to reconcile the past and present while reimagining the future.

Two Indigenous mycologists, Eliseete and Julieta, work to preserve generations of traditional knowledge about fungi and the forests that sustain them. In Lagunas de Zempoala National Park, Tlahuica Pjiekakjoo student Eliseete learns from her abuela and a circle of women who have long foraged for mushrooms. In Oaxaca’s Central Valleys, Zapotec biologist Julieta considers furthering her studies to help safeguard her region’s knowledge of flora, but doing so would distance her from her young son for two years. Around them, deforestation and illegal logging threaten both the forests and the knowledge they contain.

Otilia Portillo’s spellbinding and immersive sci-fi documentary takes an unexpected path into the entanglements between humans and mushrooms, the visible and invisible, and ancestral knowledge and modern science. Portillo gives fungi an otherworldly visual language, making their strange forms and hidden networks feel like portals into another world. Throughout, the film’s sense of wonder remains grounded in the women’s deep connection to the forest, where scientific research and ancestral knowledge coexist.

The film premiered at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (CPH: DOX), where it won the Audience Award.