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Conversation with Filmmaker Santiago EsteinouDate: Thursday January 29, 2026
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Location: SRH 1.313, LLILAS Hackett Room
The Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) hosts a conversation with Mexican documentary filmmaker Santiago Esteinou. In this event, Esteinou will reflect on the creative processes that shape his work, using his recent films The Woman of Stars and Mountains and The Freedom of Fierro as points of departure (synopses below). He will focus on the formal, narrative, and stylistic decisions involved in crafting contemporary documentary cinema.
About the Director
Santiago Esteinou is a documentary film director and producer from Mexico City. Throughout his career, he has produced five feature-length documentaries, two of which were nominated for the Ariel Award by the Mexican Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As a director, his notable works include Los años de Fierro and La libertad de Fierro, both of which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, as well as La mujer de estrellas y montañas, which premiered at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Esteinou studied cinematography at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica. He holds a master’s degree in Film and Media Arts from Temple University, and earned a master’s in Human Rights and Democracy from the Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO), Guatemala.
SYNOPSIS — The Freedom of Fierro (2024)
César Fierro has just become a free man and must rebuild his life after being wrongly sentenced to death in Texas for 40 years. He spent most of his imprisonment in the Polunsky Unit, a facility where people are held in complete isolation for decades, deprived of physical contact with others.
César’s arrival in Mexico City marks the beginning of a journey of healing and reconstruction. His daily life is filled with challenges: learning to use a cellphone, gathering the courage to step outside, overcoming the anxiety of being around others, and reconnecting with his family—who no longer even recognize his face. Despite all obstacles, César is determined to find true freedom.
SYNOPSIS — The Woman of Stars and Mountains (2023)
Rita Patiño, an Indigenous Tarahumara woman from Mexico, was discovered by a human rights organization inside a psychiatric hospital in Kansas, where she had been involuntarily confined for 12 years. During all that time, the hospital staff had been unable to determine who she was, where she came from, or what language she spoke. After enduring the consequences of confinement and medical negligence, Rita returned to Mexico, where she now lives with her niece and primary caregiver, Juanita. This documentary offers a moving portrait of the lives of these two Tarahumara women, while examining the multiple forms of racism and discrimination that Indigenous women face in both Mexico and the United States.
Free and open to the public. For more information, contact Paloma Díaz. ([email protected]) .
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