Who was Lourdes Portillo? Oscar-nominated Mexican filmmaker dies at 80

Lourdes Portillo, a Mexican-American filmmaker, activist, and journalist known for her work centered on Latin American and Mexican stories, passed away at the age of 80. The unfortunate news was confirmed by her friend Soco Aguilar, who told The Hollywood Reporter she died on Saturday, April 20, 2024.

As per the report, she died at her home in San Francisco, surrounded by her three sons and a sister. No cause of death was revealed.

Portillo is best remembered for her work on the documentaries The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (1986), The Devil Never Sleeps (1994), and Señorita Extraviada/Missing Young Woman (2001).

---

The Academy Museum opened a limited-time gallery last year in honor of Lourdes Portillo

Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, Portillo immigrated to Los Angeles at the age of 13. During a 2023 Oscars interview, she revealed how she started her career. Lourdes moved to San Francisco in the 1970s to work with the art film community, initially working with a Marxist collective called Cine Manifest. She later began her formal training at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Talking about her early days experimenting with film in San Francisco, she told Eva Recinos at the Oscars:

"That was the beginning of thinking that I could make films that could actually move people to do something that would be good for everybody."

Portillo is known for merging art and activism in her documentaries. She directed (with co-director Nina Serrano) her debut film, Después del Terremoto, in 1979 while studying. The film is centered around a Nicaraguan refugee from the 1972 Managua earthquake in San Francisco.

Her second film, The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, was centered around a group of mothers who gathered every week in Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo during Argentina’s military dictatorship. The film pushed the director to fame, earning her an Oscar nomination.

Since then, Lourdes Portillo has worked on several films, including the satirical comedy Culture Clash: Mission Magic Mystery Tour and La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead, which explores Mexican tradition. Her work has won her several awards, especially at regional film festivals. Her 1994 film, The Devil Never Sleeps, was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2020.

Talking about Portillo, her friend Soco Aguilar told The Hollywood Reporter:

"Lourdes Portillo was my beloved friend whom I’ve known since the early 1990s while studying and working in San Francisco. Portillo was an extraordinary human, contributing not one but myriad marks during her lifetime through filmmaking and social activism. She was an unconventional, artful talent — a 'chingona' whose life will continue impacting others for generations."

In May 2023, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened a 10-day gallery in honor of Lourdes Portillo as part of its Limited Series and Spotlights. As a tribute to her friend, Aguilar quoted Maya Angelou's words, "If you’re going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can’t be erased.”

The museum's interim director of film programs, K.J. Relth-Miller, described her work as those that "defy categorization, slipping easily between docu-fiction, experimental video, and the melodrama of telenovelas."

At the time, during her interview with Deadline, Lourdes Portillo told Sunil Sadarangani she was working on a final project with her friend Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a performance artist focused on their experiences in Mexico and San Francisco.