Briella, a 12-year-old girl, is home alone, waiting for her parents to return. To pass the time, she starts playing with their belongings. An urgent call from her uncle Dylan tells her to lock herself inside. Eventually, Dylan delivers the heartbreaking news: her parents have been kidnapped.

Emily Yaceni Mazariegos León, originally from Puerto Barrios, Izabal, and currently residing in Guatemala City, is a filmmaker passionate about visual art and cinematic storytelling. Since 2021, she has found in cinema a powerful tool to explore the complexity of the human condition, particularly through the genres of crime, drama, and suspense.

Emily is in her final year of the Bachelor’s degree in Film, Visual Arts, and Entrepreneurship at Universidad Francisco Marroquín, an institution where she has developed her passion for art direction, makeup, costume design, and film production.

Her most notable project to date is Briella, a short film that explores the loss of innocence as a result of violence in Guatemala and other Latin American countries. Briella tells the story of a young girl facing the tragedy of her parents’ kidnapping, her uncle’s murder, and the process of adapting to a solitary and violent reality.