«The history of Guatemala is written, with blood and tears, on the body and soul of its women.»
With this sentence begins this shocking documentary about Guatemala, which focuses particularly on the direct relationship between its history and violence against women.
The documentary begins with the struggle of the Guatemalan people who managed in 1944 to break the deep-rooted chains of oppression that had dragged on since it was a Spanish colony, and which had barely changed during the 19th century, and shows how this courage had as response a planned state repression of more than five decades directed fundamentally by the big landowners, operated by the army, with the support of the United States and the high hierarchy of the Catholic Church.
For seven years, Jordi Ferrer has been weaving this terrible story, with unpublished documentaries, reports, photographs and historical documents, as well as interviews with key actors both national and foreign. A story that takes us into the last 70 years of Guatemala, showing us that although it was the indigenous peoples who were hit the hardest by repression and genocide, it is these same peoples who emerged with strength, becoming actors in who cannot be ignored, because without them there is no nation. The documentary also shows that the people who do not learn from their history are condemned to repeat it, by showing that street violence, which today dismembers women and daily drags young people from popular sectors to the grave, is the product of ‘a state that refused, on the one hand, to recognize and punish the genocide and crimes against humanity committed from 1954 to 1996 by shielding itself with a system of impunity, and on the other, to do nothing to change the social structures, which remain intact, thus allowing the existence of agricultural and mining operations in the hands of large transnational companies, which has led to a new stage of confrontation in indigenous areas in which the local inhabitants defend with the life its last territories.
A work that becomes indispensable material for understanding the pain and fragmentations of Guatemala in the 21st century.
At the presentation and subsequent discussion, we spoke with its director and screenwriter, Jordi Ferrer, and with international collaborator Jordi Garrel from the Fundació Pau i Solidaritat.
Data sheet
Title: Guatemala. Cuando el futuro perdió el miedo
Script and direction: Jordi Ferrer
Production: Albert Barceló and Jordi Ferrer
Editing: Pau Morell, Jordi Ferrer and Inés B
Photography: Jordi Ferrer
Music: Dani Trujillo
Producer: Utopic
Year: 2016
Duration: 85′