ABOUT
THEY/THEM, SHE/HERS
Filmmaker, film educator and occasional programmer based in Ciudad de México.
Through intimate, collaborative, sensory, and speculative gestures, their films entangle and reimagine body, territory and identity beyond colonial legacies in the center of so-called México. Through cinema, they seek to nurture expanded bonds of kinship between land, human and more-than-human beings, while honoring the line of peasants, healers, bricklayers and artisans in their family.
Titixe (2018),their first feature doc, has been selected in more than fifty international film festivals including Festa del Cinema di Roma, FICUNAM, Trieste, Málaga, Black Canvas, BlackStar, Full Frame, etc. The film has received more than 10 prizes and mentions.
In 2022, they debuted as an opera stage director for Opera Lafayette’s Silvain which premiered in NYC’s Museo del Barrio and Washington DC’s Kennedy Center. That year, they also premiered “Eclipsis”, a short film produced by Mexico’s National University Cinematheque (Filmoteca UNAM) and awarded Best Experimental Film at Ann Arbor Film Festival (2023), Best Direction at Black Canvas (2023), among other prizes.
Their second filmm Our Body Is an Expanding Star (2025), is co-directed with their brother Semillites Hernández Velasco. This project has been supported by FOCINE-IMCINE (2021) and Firelight Media’s William Greaves Fund (United States, 2021). It will have its World Premiere at IDFA’s Envision Competition on November 2025.
They are currently developing their upcoming film “Capolcuahuitl”, selected in Catapulta-Ficunam (2025), Procine Desarrollo (2025) and written in residency at Macdowell Fellowship (2024).
They have been a recipient of México’s Jóvenes Creadores grant (2023-2024), a Flaherty Seminar Professional Development Fellow (2019) and Full Frame’s Charles C. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award recipient (2019).
FOR QUESTIONS, COLLABORATIONS, THOUGHTS: CONTACT HERE.
DOWNLOAD PORTRAIT HERE
OUR BODY IS AN EXPANDING STAR
(NUESTRO CUERPO ES UNA ESTRELLA QUE SE EXPANDE)
Semillites and Tania, two queer siblings bound by a powerful friendship, journey through the brown terrain of their own bodies—lands they once turned away from while growing up in a culturally displaced family in Ciudad de México. They traverse landscapes of skin, dreams, and viscera, crossing into places that pulse with their family’s memory. Along the way, they encounter a constellation of ancestors—human and more-than-human—who guide them in reimagining identity beyond México’s colonial cartographies.
Through gestures of animation, manifesto, collage, dance, and dialogue with their surroundings, the film moves across scales of body and territory, tracing the quiet force of transformation and the tenderness of siblinghood.
MÉXICO / DOCUMENTARY / 4K-16MM-ANIMATION / 83’ / 2025
Co-directed by Tania Hernández Velasco and Semillites Hernández Velasco
In collaboration with the Hernández Velasco family
World Premiere @ IDFA Envision Competition 2025
Film supported by IMCINE-FOCINE (2021) and the William Greaves - Firelight Media Fund (2021). Produced by unahojacae & Autonauta, in coproduction with Estudios Churubusco Azteca.
Selected by Documentary Pitching @ DocMontevideo 2023 (winner of IDFA’s Spotlight Award, DokLeipzig Award and MiradasDoc Award). Selected at Arca Lab 2024 (winner of Cine Matriz Award).
Produced by Viana González and Tania Hernández Velasco
Art, animation, illustrations, wardrobe - Semillites Hernández Velasco
Written by Semillites Hernández Velasco and Tania Hernández Velasco
4K Cinematography- Sandra Luz López Barroso, Tania Hernández Velasco
16mm Cinematography- Elena Pardo
Editing - Diana Toucedo, Tania Hernández Velasco
Sound supervisor - María Alejandra Rojas
Sound Design - María Alejandra Rojas, Nayuribe Montero Jiménez
Direct Sound - Ram Rodríguez Alcocer, Aurora Muñoz
Music - Fernando Vigueras (in collaboration with Aura Arreola)
Choreography - Aura Arreola
Color correction - Isis Puente
Postproduction supervisor - Victor Hugo Gómez
Drone photography - Aurora Muñoz
Microscopic photography - Inés Gutiérrez (CirrinaLab)
Premix 5.1 - Arturo Salazar RB
Mixers - Raymundo Ballesteros, Alan Zaragoza Contreras
Foley and dialogue editing - María Alejandra Rojas
Ambience and effects editing - Nayuribe Montero Jiménez
Production managers - Dami Sainz Edwards, Ariadna Mogollón
Production coordinator - Ariana Landaburo
Assistant producers - Dany Celeiro, Erika Lozano (Kuru), Kani Lapuerta
Location manager- Iván de Lázaro
Gaffer - Altagracia Hernández, Moisés Salazar
Additional wardrobe - Daniela Sendra
Music licensing - Música Mono (Denia Nieto, Fernando Heftye, Igor Figueroa)
Chorus - Alejandro Bronski, Aurora Muñoz, Constansa Gervais, Emmanuel Hernández Velasco, Eduardo Palenque, Gizeh Trejo, Miguel G. Hernández Velasco, Tania Hernández Velasco
Poster and credits design - Semillites Hernández Velasco
Subtitles - Rosa Galguera
Trailer - Lorenzo Mora Salazar
Script adviser - Lisandra López Fabe
Editing advisers- Andrea Chignoli, Eduardo Palenque, Manuel Muñoz, Marina Lameiro, Silvia Jiménez
Distribution adviser - Gabriela Sandoval
Additional credits to be added.
TITIXE
A mourning tree, dancing sprouts, ghosts, stories and forgotten seeds. This is a Mexican family’s very last attempt to cultivate their land.
DOCUMENTARY / MÉXICO / 62' / 2018 / DCP - 5.1
The last peasant of a family has died and with him, all wisdom to till the soil has been lost. Without experience, his daughter and granddaughter will attempt a last traditional harvest to try to convince Grandma, the widow of the peasant, to keep their plot of land. Together they will uncover the leftovers (locally known as the titixe) of this man and his world: a mourning tree, dancing sprouts, the language of clouds, ghosts, stories and the endless menace of losing the crops to a tempest. This is an intimate mosaic of the last harvest of a Mexican family, in a country that has forsaken its rural origins.
Directed, photographed, edited and produced by Tania Hernández Velasco
With Yolanda Velasco, Concepción Juárez, Valentín Velasco, Tío Abel Velasco, Abel Velasco
Co-producer: Rosa Galguera Ortega
Executive producers: Nael Gharzeddine, Ivan Lowenberg
Sound design & direct sound: Mariana Rodríguez Alcocer
Co-editing: Eduardo Palenque
Original music: Jorge Bolado
Additional music: Mario Bringas
Sound mix: Manuel Aguilar
Music supervisor: Fernando Heftye
Graphic Design: Juan Arturo García
Poster illustration: Dulce Ayala
SELECTED PRESS (SPANISH): 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5
SELECTED PRESS (ENGLISH): 1 / 2 / 3
POSTER: HI-RES / LOW-RES
STILLS: 1 / 2 /3 / 4
DIRECTOR'S PORTRAIT: HERE
EXHIBITIONS IN FESTIVALS: HERE
ECLIPSIS
A recently discovered monarch butterfly subespecies (Danaus plexippus eclipsis) possesses strange toxines in their scales that provoke powerful nervous alterations in their predators.
Eclipsis is a sci-fi short film that especulates –narratively and sensorialy– around that which happens to human beings if they enter in contact with this imaginary butterfly. Intertwining the vivid microscopic colors and textures in 4K, the sway of human body registered in Super 8mm and archival footage, this film imagines a multiespecies crossroads.
MÉXICO / FICTION / 16’/ 4K - SUPER 8MM / 2022
Produced by Mexico’s Autonomous National University’s Cinematheque (Filmoteca UNAM) and Síntesis UNAM, in coproduction with Estudios Churubusco.
Written, directed, produced and co-edited by Tania Hernández Velasco
Hugo Villa & Juan Ayala - Executive production
In collaboration with
Aura Arreola - Choreography, performance and music
Inés Gutiérrez (CirrinaLab) - Microscopic images
Sandra Luz López Barroso - Director of photography
Eduardo Palenque - Editing
Mariana Rodríguez Alcocer - Sound design and direct sound
Eduardo Gaytán & Felipe Meléndez - Sound mix
Kuru Lozano - Production manager
Fernanda Becerril & Gabriela Álvarez - Line producers
Semillitxs Hernández Velasco - Graphic design
Yolanda Velasco - Catering
STILLS: 1 / 2 / 3
EXHIBITION IN FILM FESTIVALS
- BLACK CANVAS FILM FESTIVAL (México) - Best Director Award (México Dentro del Canvas section)
- ANN ARBOR EXPERIMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL (US) - Best Experimental Film
- MÉXICO CITY’S VIDEODANCE FILM FESTIVAL (México) - Best Director Award
- MCKINVILLE FILM FESTIVAL (US) - Best Experimental Film
- EL ALEPH ARTE Y CIENCIA (MX)
- AMBULANTE (México)
- ULTRACINEMA (México)
- MUESTRA MÍNIMA (México)
- OAXACACINE (México)
- BLUE DANUBE FILM FESTIVAL (Austria)
- VANCOUVER LATIN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL (Canada)
- GIRONA FILM FESTIVAL (Spain)
- DRUNKEN FILM FESTIVAL (US)
- VERACRUZ’S FILMOTHEQUE FESTIVAL (México)
- INTERNATIONAL NETWORK OF EXPERIMENTAL FICTION FESTIVAL AND SYMPOSIUM (UK)
- TRINIDAD Y TOBAGO FILM FESTIVAL (Trinidad y Tobago)
- SALT LAKE CITY’S FILM SOCIETY SCREENDANCE CULTURAL TOUR (US) - SPOTLIGHT ON TANIA HERNÁNDEZ VELASCO’S WORK
- TERRAFILME FESTIVAL (México)
- BENSON FILM FESTIVAL: Ultracinema Programme (US)
- MIRADA CORTA (México)
- CUCALORUS FILM FESTIVAL (US)
- POINT ARENA FILM FESTIVAL (US)