TAKING FLIGHT, 11min., USA
Directed by Will Chehab
In an area where traditional education fails students, one Mayan woman starts her own school in order to rebuild her community from the ground up. Through er integral education, which includes meals for students and workshops for their parents, Ingrid Villasenor strengthens her home of Panajachel one step at a time.

Get to know the filmmaker:
My motivation to make this film came from my desire to learn how to tell a good story through documentary. I’m currently a senior at the University of Michigan, and when looking for what to do over the summer, I saw an email from the department about making a documentary in Guatemala with Actuality Abroad. I signed up, interviewed, and was lucky enough to get in. Actuality Abroad set us (the crew) up with Tejiendo Futuros. What motivated me to tell Ingrid’s story specifically was the fact that she dedicates herself to her people, to her country, after her country’s government kidnapped her father whom she never saw again. The fact that Ingrid services her community after what happened to her family is powerful and incredible, and I knew right away that this was a story to tell. I really wanted to make sure that I did everything I possibly could to tell it right, and to be honest, there’s so much more to the story I want to explore and highlight because it is much more incredible than what we were able to capture in our four weeks in Guatemala.

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