Huella (Footprint)
2022 · 14m · USA
Directed by Gabriela Ortega
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
Tones: dark, melancholic, surreal
A young Dominican immigrant woman and trained flamenco dancer, now stuck at a soul-crushing call-center job, is visited by supernatural ancestors after her grandmother’s death triggers a generational family curse—forcing her to move through the five stages of grief to break the cycle.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Flamenco-dance-as-grief-ritual with a generational curse and call-center day job — at least the form (dance) is doing the work, not just illustrating it. Cautiously interested.
Gabriela Ortega fuses flamenco choreography with horror grammar to make the body the site of generational grief — Sundance and Tribeca selections confirm what the premise suggests. This is the formal ambition I look for.
Fourteen minutes fusing horror with flamenco choreography so that grief and bicultural identity manifest as a curse broken through ancestral movement — body as both trauma site and liberation is a genuine formal marriage of dance-film and supernatural genre. Sundance, Tribeca, Fantastic Fest selection confirms the execution earns the ambition.
Reviews
Ortega’s approach plays with the codes of genre, as Daniela’s grief and identity crisis are manifested through a curse that she needs to break to be able to move forward... it is Shakira Barrera’s hypnotic performance that truly allows the film to hit all its emotional layers.
Ortega uses the power of suggestion to stoke the mood — the whispers of prayer, a sudden wind blowing up where it shouldn’t, an unexpected voice at the end of the line. Ortega successfully invites viewers to immerse themselves in the rhythm of grief, leaving audiences curious about her potential with longer-form work.
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2022
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2022
- Fantastic Fest 2022
- LALIFF (Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival) 2022, NBC & Telemundo Best Director
- Aspen Shortsfest 2022
- Nashville Film Festival 2022
- Hollyshorts Film Festival 2022
- Third Horizon Film Festival 2022
- Crested Butte Film Festival 2022, Best Narrative Short
- Syracuse International Film Festival 2022, Best Experimental Short
- Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival 2022, Best Spanish Short Film