Tatiana Huezo is IDFA 2026’s Guest of Honor

Born in El Salvador and raised in Mexico, Huezo has developed a distinctive body of work that moves between documentary and fiction, exploring how the violent consequences of organized crime and political turmoil shape the intimate lives of local families and communities. Her cinema is rooted in close observation and shaped by a highly attentive visual and sonic language—allowing memories and experience to surface through atmosphere and deeply personal stories. 

Huezo first gained international recognition with her feature-length debut The Tiniest Place (2011), which screened at over 80 international festivals, taking home several awards, including Best Feature at Visions du Réel. The film offers a portrait of a remote Salvadoran village whose inhabitants carry the memory of a massacre during the country’s civil war. This was followed by Tempestad (2016), a film backed by IDFA Bertha Fund in 2013, which traces two women’s experiences of disappearance, imprisonment, and impunity across Mexico.  

Her fiction debut Prayers for the Stolen (2021) is a coming-of-age story about girls growing up in the mountains of Mexico, under the threat of human trafficking by local drug cartels. The IDFA Bertha Fund-supported film The Echo (2023) offers a quiet portrait of life and childhood in a rural village, with daily delights contrasted with echoes of hardship—the title pitched at IDFA Forum in 2021 and won the Best Documentary Award at Berlinale in 2023. 

For IDFA 2026, Huezo curated a personal Top 10 film selection, taking her interest in cinematography as a starting point to explore how the camera shapes our perception of reality. 

Huezo on her selection: 

“These films have accompanied me and inspired me at different stages of my journey in many ways. I am moved by their profound and complex exploration of the characters, and the relationship between the camera and the subject, the rhythm of the images, and the atmospheres that envelop the stories. They are films I keep returning to, identify with, and find echoes of my own journey. 

Several of the films are made by director-cinematographers. I feel a close connection to them, perhaps because my own journey into cinema began with photography. Interestingly, many these films also deal with children or teenagers. That stage of life is something that continues to fascinate and move me.” 

Among the selected titles are Belovy (1993) by Viktor Kossakovsky, Tropic of Cancer (2004) by Eugenio Polgovsky, The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974) by Werner Herzog, and a short film titled Life (1993) by Artavazd Pelechian. 

During the festival, Tatiana Huezo will have an extended conversation with Isabel Arrate Fernandez, IDFA’s Artistic Director. The Guest of Honor Talk is the centerpiece of the edition’s Talks program.