Sofía is putting up search posters of her missing boyfriend Luis all over town. Copies of his picture surround her. Luis is one of the more than 80.000 missing persons in Mexico. At night Sofía faces a recurring dream: Little by little her world tranforms into paper. First the birds, then the ground, her room, untill even death is made of paper. "PAPEL" tells this Mexican story of mourning and hope in black and white still images.

Director Biography

Gisela Carbajal Rodríguez was born in Aguascalientes Mexico in 1987. She studied Audio Visual Arts at Universidad La Concordia Aguascalientes where she graduated in 2009. Since 2012 she has been studying Directing for Documentary Film and Television journalism at University of Television and Film Munich. She was selected for the Docuvillage Directors Program in Akko, Israel in 2015. In 2016 she shot a journalistic project in South Africa on a DAAD Promos scholarship. Her latest documentary "Oro Blanco" was screened at over 50 festivals and was nominated for the Student Academy Award in 2019. In 2019 she also received the Special award of the Kirch foundation’s media art scholarship. She currently works on the animated documentary "Ausente" supported by the Bavarian Film Fund and produced by the Mexican production company Brujazul.