Narco Cultura
Director: Shaul Schwarz
Producer(s): Ocean Size Pictures’ Todd Hagopian, Parts and Labor’s Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy
U.S. Distributor: Rights Available
Despite being an avid fan of the docu form circa Errol Morris’ Thin Blue Line, unfortunately you won’t find many docu items on this countdown but making the top 100 cut is one that I’ve been tracking for a couple of years now in photographer Shaul Schwarz’s directorial debut. Six years in the making, Schwarz is an award-winning photo journalist with nerves of steel who somehow managed to immerse himself in a pop culture not related to dangerous celebs from the Hollywood hills, but instead one that belongs to the same violent backdrop of Gerardo Naranjo’s Miss Bala.
Gist: To a growing number of Mexicans and Latinos in the Americas, narco traffickers have become iconic outlaws and the new models of fame and success. They represent a pathway out of the ghetto – a new form of the American Dream, fueled by the war on drugs. NARCO CULTURA looks at this explosive phenomenon from within; cycles of addiction to money, drugs and violence that are rapidly gaining strength on both sides of the US/Mexican border.
Release Date: 2013 Sundance Film Festival invite – U.S. Documentary Competition. Should find a distribution deal at the fest for later release.
