Jesse Loncraine Movies

In 1982, filmmaker Pamela Yates traveled to Guatemala to make a film about the nation's ongoing civil war, with General Efrain Rios Montt's military dictatorship on one side and a rebel army of farmers, intellectuals and indigenous Mayans on the other. At the time Yates completed her film When The Mountains Tremble, the world was just becoming aware that Montt and his troops were engaging in genocide, determined to wipe out the Maya people one and for all. In the 21st Century, the leaders responsible for the Guatemalan atrocities had still not been brought to justice, and Yates was approached by activists building a case against them, including Rigoberta Menchú, winner of the 1992 Novel Peace Prize. In the film Granito, Yates and her team search though the many hours of footage they shot in 1982 in hopes of finding material that will provide evidence against the criminals, with Menchú and her colleagues assisting Yates and her editors. Describing their effort as similar to looking for a single grain of sand, Granito documents their efforts as well as the crimes committed by the Guatemalan military in the 1970s and '80s. Granito was an official selection at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi