Biography

Elena is an award-winning creative producer, cultural strategist, and activist. She has been working in the documentary film industry for over 15 years. Between 2005 and 2016, Fortes served as the director of Ambulante, a non-profit organization which she co-founded with Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, and Pablo Cruz, in order to support and promote a documentary film culture in Mexico. Ambulante's multiple programs include Latin America's largest touring documentary film festival, a long-term filmmaking training program for under-served communities in Mexico, and an editorial division. The organization has received prestigious awards and grants, including the Prince Claus Award (2019), and the WOLA Human Rights Award (2011), in recognition of its track record promoting documentaries as a tool for change, as well as numerous grants from Ford Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Foundations, USAID, among others. In 2017, Fortes co-founded, along with award-winning producer and Flaherty fellow Daniela Alatorre, and the support of Cinepolis (the second largest cinema exhibitor in the world), the Mexico City based production company No Ficción. With the company, she has produced 13 films in the past three years including Midnight Family (d. Luke Lorentzen), shortlisted for the 2020 Academy Awards, Vivos (d. Ai WeiWei), which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and most recently, A Cop Movie (d. Alonso Riuzpalacios), which premiered in the Official Selection at Berlinale in 2021 and received A Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for Editing.

Fortes has participated in juries and programming committees for various film festivals and organizations, including Sundance, Camerimage, CPH:DOX, Dokufest, Hot Docs, Lima International Film Festival, among others. She is also an accomplished graphic designer and received her B.A. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania.
- IMDb mini biography by: Elena Fortes