ABOUT
THEY/THEM-SHE/HERS
Film educator & filmmaker.
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.
Director of Titixe (2018) and Eclipsis (2022, produced by Filmoteca UNAM and Síntesis UNAM); co-director of Everything That Has a Name Is (with Marina Lameiro, funded by the Pamplona Encounters of Thought, 2025) and Our Body Is a Star That Expands (with Semillites Hernández Velasco, 2025).
Their films have screened at more than 70 international festivals, including IDFA, Ann Arbor, FICUNAM, Ambulante, Punto de Vista, Full Frame, BlackStar, Festa del Cinema di Roma, D’A Barcelona, Trieste, Biarritz, and Málaga, among others.
They have received support from FOCINE–IMCINE Production, the Firelight Media William Greaves Development Fund, Mexico’s Jóvenes Creadores Fellowship (2023–2024), and the Flaherty Seminar Professional Development Fellowship (2019). They also received the Charles C. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award.
They are currently developing their next film, Capolcuahuitl, selected for Catapulta–FICUNAM (2025) and PROCINE Development (2025), and written during a MacDowell Fellowship residency (2024).
FOR QUESTIONS, COLLABORATIONS, THOUGHTS: 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 rejected. They traverse landscapes of skin, dreams and viscera, crossing into places that pulse with their ancestors’ memory and, along the way, encounter a constellation of flowers, grasshoppers and fossils. Through collage, animation, manifesto, dance and documentary intimacy, the film moves across scales of body and territory, reimagining identity beyond Mexico’s colonial narratives.
MÉXICO / DOCUMENTARY / 4K-16MM / 83’ / 2025
Co-directed by Tania Hernández Velasco and Semillites Hernández Velasco
Produced by Viana González and Tania Hernández Velasco
In collaboration with the Hernández Velasco family
Film supported by IMCINE-FOCINE (2021) and the William Greaves Firelight Media Fund (2021). Produced by unahojacae & Autonauta, in coproduction with Estudios Churubusco Azteca.
COMPLETE CREDITS HERE
DOWNLOAD POSTER HERE
STILLS 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5
DIRECTORS’ PORTRAITS SEMILLITES / TANIA
- IDFA: Envision Competition (Amsterdam, November 2025)
- Festival D’A: Talents Competition (Barcelona, March 2026)
- Festival Internacional de Cine de Guadalajara: Mezcal Competition, Maguey Competition (Guadalajara, México - April 2026) - SPECIAL JURY MENTION MAGUEY PRIZE
- Festival Punto de Vista: Official Competition (Pamplona, Spain - April, 2026)
- Semana del Cine Mexicano en Madrid (Madrid, Spain - June, 2026)
- ZINEGOAK Bilbao: Documentary Competition (Bilbao, Spain - June, 2026)
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).
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)