Granito: How to Nail a Dictator | Review

Through a miraculous chain of events, many of the main subjects featured in When The Mountains Tremble have survived the ordeal and risen to a position to fight back, with hopes of international extradition for these dictators to try them for genocide in Spain. The situation has drawn documentarian Pamela Yates back into the mix as a key witness with her film as hard evidence. Her new doc “sequel” Granito: How to Nail a Dictator follows Yates through a nostalgic revisiting of her time spent working on Mountains Tremble, as well as the difficult struggle of putting together a solid case to take down the inhuman Guatemalan dictators still in power.

As a baby faced documentarian back in 1982, Yates was an intrepid and highly confident young individual on a rather dangerous self imposed mission to expose the government ordered massacres that were ravaging Guatemala’s indigenous population. After making contacts deep within both sides of the conflict, Yates and her partner, Newton Thomas Sigel, were able to capture intimate footage of interviews with genocidal dictators, the dramatic trauma of said massacres, and secret guerrilla outfits in training. Rigoberta Menchú, an indigenous woman deeply effected by the conflict, became the film’s protagonist, outlining the story of Guatemala’s plight with heartbreaking candor. The finished film, Mountains Tremble, went on to play the first Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize. Following her role in the film, Menchú continued to spread the word about her war torn country, eventually winning the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts. Though a cease fire situation has been reached, the dictators who once ordered thousands killed are still in power.

Without having seen When The Mountains Tremble, one might expect they’d be somewhat lost in the story of Guatemala’s trouble history, but Granito succinctly retells the tail in an abbreviated fashion with a focus on Yates’s personal experience in the midst of the action. Much of the footage used is from outtakes from Mountains Tremble in which Yates slaps her mic in place of her missing clapboard. She reminisces about her time spent acting like a secret agent traversing a tight lipped underground scene full of unnamed activists and gun toting rebels. It comes across with lively excitement and a distinct feeling of danger. As Yates starts to connect the dots between current story contributors and past resistance members, a sense of hope is revealed, despite a towering wall of road blocks preventing justice for the indigenous people of Guatemala she holds so dear to her heart.

Yates’s newest docu project is a curious look into the dangerous world of documentary film making in the midst of large scale conflict. She manages to reflect on her past project, taking a look at how it effected the world view of Guatemala, while also checking back on the lives of a number of people involved in the initial film. That said, this is all background information in place to allow for the last third of the film to unfurl a layered series of meetings and paperwork that show how difficult it can be to pursue international crimes, even ones as despicable as genocide. For reasons of both film reflection and historic preservation, Granito is a revelatory film and one that will certainly leave a weighty impression on its viewers.

Rating 3.5 stars