Fabiola meets Cecilia, a charming woman from Ciudad Juárez, and falls in love. She decides to visit—unaware she is being lured into a human trafficking network. What begins as a hopeful journey turns into a deadly trap: she is deceived, abducted, and murdered in the desert. The story unfolds through Fabiola's posthumous inner monologue, gradually revealing the events leading to her disappearance and death.

Opuntia is a social horror short film completed within seven weeks, developed from concept to final execution. It follows Fabiola, a 23-year-old woman from Guadalajara who keeps her sexual orientation hidden and travels to meet Cecilia after connecting through a dating app.

How can a narrative hold tenderness and horror at once—while showing the moment where trust becomes a mechanism of control?

The film alternates between hyperreal depictions of physical violence and surreal, hallucinatory sequences reflecting the breakdown of Fabiola's consciousness. The work was directed end-to-end under a seven-week timeline: shaping an emotionally driven narrative anchored in posthumous inner monologue, building a visual system that balances raw violence with symbolic, psychological imagery, managing production logistics and cast coordination, leading set / costume / character design, directing intimacy scenes with clear on-set protocols and care, and developing the film's visual identity and promotional graphics.