Filmmaker and activist Lourdes Portillo has died at the age of 80. The Mexican writer, director, producer, and journalist was best known for her Oscar-nominated film Las Madres – The Mothers Of The Plaza De Mayo.
Portillo centered Mexican and Latin American stories for her work. Her Oscar-nominated film Las Madres – The Mothers Of The Plaza De Mayo, which was released in 1985, was a documentary that followed the stories of the mothers of Argentinian desaparecidos, who held protests in Buenos Aires during Argentina’s military dictatorship.
Another one of Portillo’s notable documentaries was 1994’s, The Devil Never Sleeps, which follows Portillo, who suspects her uncle has been murdered, and investigates his death in Mexico.
Portillo died in her home in San Francisco. A friend close to Portillo, Soco Aguilar told The Hollywood Reporter that Portillo died surrounded by her younger sister and her three sons.
Aguilar said, “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.”
Portillo was originally born in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1943, and she immigrated with her parents and four siblings to Los Angeles at the age of 13.
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