About the team
Alonso Ruizpalacios (Director) Alonso is a Mexican film director and screenwriter. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London. His first feature Güeros won over 40 prizes in festivals around the world, including Best First Feature at the Berlinale 2014, as well as awards at San Sebastian, AFI, Tribeca, Havana, among many others. It won 5 Mexican Academy Ariel Awards, including Best Picture. Museo, his second feature, starring Gael Garc√≠a Bernal, won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlinale 2018, as well as Best Director in Athens and Morelia, and was the first major release in a foreign language from YouTube Originals. It is nominated for 12 Ariel Awards last year. His short films Café Para√≠so, The C√∫ Bird’s Last Song and Verde have been Official Selection at TIFF, Clermont-Ferrand, Cannes Critic’s Week, London Film Fest, Tribeca, and have won over 30 prizes around the world. He is represented by WME. He’s also trying to be a Little more patient with his sons Mart√≠n and Tomás.
Elena Fortes (Producer) Elena is an award winning creative producer, cultural strategist, and activist. She has been working in the documentary film industry for over 15 years. Between 2005 and 2016, Fortes served as the director of Ambulante, a non-profit organization which she co-founded with Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, and Pablo Cruz, in order to support and promote a documentary film culture in Mexico. In 2017, Fortes co-founded, along with fellow producer Daniela Alatorre, and the support of Cinepolis, the Mexico City based production company No Ficción. With the company, she has produced 13 films in the past three years including Midnight Family (d. Luke Lorentzen), shortlisted for the 2020 Academy Awards, Vivos (d. Ai WeiWei), which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and most recently, A Cop Movie (d. Alonso Riuzpalacios) set to premiere at the Berlinale in 2021. Fortes has participated in juries and programming committees for various film festivals and organizations, including Sundance, Camerimage, CPH:DOX, Dokufest, Hot Docs, Lima International Film Festival, among others. She is also an accomplished graphic designer and received her B.A. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania.
Daniela Alatorre (Producer) Mexican producer and filmmaker. Alatorre was the head of the Documentary Programming Committee for the Morelia International Film Festival for 7 years, which she also produced for ten. In 2017 she founded No Ficci√≥n, an independent media company based in Mexico City along with Elena Fortes and Cinépolis. She is the producer of the short films A Three Minute Hu, A Tale of Two Kitchens, Birders, Lorena, Light Footed Woman and After the Raid, the New York Times op-docs Unsilenced and Ruptured City, and the feature documentaries El General, ¬°De Panzazo!, El Ingeniero, Midnight Family, Vivos (as associate producer) and Users (as co-producer). Retreat, which received a special mention from the jury and the Ambulante Film Festival prize at the Morelia Film Festival, is her first feature documentary as a director. She is also the co-director of Fragments, a short film about and done during the pandemic that had its premiere at the Morelia Film Festival in 2020.