Selections from the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, 9th Edition: Granito: How to Nail a Dictator
Granito: How to Nail a Dictator
dir. Pamela Yates, Peter Kinoy and Paco de Onis, US, 2010, video, 100 mins, English, Quiché and Spanish w/ English subtitles
Part political thriller, part memoir, Granito takes us through a haunting tale of genocide and justice that spans four decades, two films, and filmmaker Pamela Yates’s own career. Granito is a story of destinies joined together by Guatemala’s past and of how When the Mountains Tremble, a documentary from 1982, emerges as an active player in the present by becoming forensic evidence in a genocide case against a military dictator. In an incredible twist of fate, Yates shot the only known footage of the army as it carried out the genocide. Twenty-five years later, this recording becomes evidence in an international war crimes case against the very army commander who permitted Yates to film. Irrevocably linked by the events of 1982, each of the films’ characters is integral to the country’s reconstruction of a collective memory, the search for truth, and the pursuit of justice. Through the work of American filmmakers, forensics experts in Guatemala, and lawyers in Spain, the quest for accountability in Guatemala continues – with each individual contributing his or her own granito, or tiny grain of sand.
