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Columba Vértiz

Journalist and film critic born in Mexico City in 1968. She studied communication sciences and journalism in the Political and Social Sciences Department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She began working in print journalism in 1991. She has written for Mexican newspapers such as El Universal and La Jornada, among others, and for the Spanish paper El País. She served as the coordinator of reporters at the National Institute of Anthropology and History from 1996 to 1998. In 1999, she began working at Proceso, a national weekly paper focused on politics and culture.
In her articles, interviews, and long-form essays, she has captured the state of culture (literature, visual arts, music, archaeology, history, philosophy, dance, film, and theater) in Mexico, Europe, the United States, and Latin America. For over 25 years, too, she has covered cinema with articles, interviews, research, and reviews. She has developed TV capsules on literature, history, theater, dance, music, painting, and film, especially for ProcesoTV. She is the creator of the video column Columba Pictures on Hispanic film. She also writes for the literature-focused website ifreedoms.com.

She wrote The Mexican Hollywood, published by Proceso, on the immigration of Mexican filmmakers to the so called Mecca of the Movies in the US; contributed to the book Los generales, also published by Proceso, on the militarization of Mexico toward combatting organized crime, particularly drug trafficking; and participated in the volume México: Su apuesta por la cultura, published by Proceso in collaboration with Grijalbo and the UNAM, for which she coordinated the film section covering the entire 20th century.

Vértiz de la Fuente received the Joaquín Rodríguez Warrior of the Press Award for Achievements in Film Journalism at the 15th FICM, granted by the Mexican Network of Film Journalists, as well as the 2018 Rubén Regnier Award, granted by cultural journalists working in the fields of radio, TV, and print and digital media across Mexico.
She has offered many workshops and lectures on cultural journalism and film. She has also served as a juror at festivals such as Shorts México, the Mérida & Yucatán International Film Festival, and the Guanajuato International Film Festival, among others.