Granito: How to Nail a Dictator

Plot Summary

In a startling loop of time and memory, Granito shows how a filmmaker's first documentary has been instrumental to indict Guatemalan ex-dictator Ríos Montt. In January 2012, after 30 years of legal impunity, Ríos Montt was indicted by a Guatemalan court for crimes against humanity. He was charged with committing genocide against the Mayan people in the 1980s, becoming the first former head of state to be tried in his own country for genocide. Back in 1982, a young first time filmmaker, Pamela Yates, gained unprecedented access to Ríos Montt, his generals and leftist guerrillas waging a clandestine war deep in the mountains. The resulting film, When the Mountains Tremble (1983) revealed that the Guatemalan army was killing Mayan civilians. When the Mountains Tremble became central to her life again 30 years later when a Spanish lawyer investigating the Ríos Montt regime asked for her help. Granito spans 30 years and portrays seven protagonists in Guatemala, Spain and the United States as they attempt to bring justice to violence-plagued Guatemala. Among the twists of fate, a 22-year-old Mayan woman, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, the storyteller in When the Mountains Tremble, goes on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and then initiates the court case against General Ríos Montt that eventually leads to the use of Yates' footage as evidence. A guerrilla commander, Gustavo Meoño, who authorized Yates' filming with the insurgents in 1982, becomes a key player in uncovering the mechanisms of disappearances and state terror. Granito is about the remarkable impact of a film on a nation’s fight for justice, dramatically entered as evidence to bring a dictator to justice and give Mayan people their day in court. It is an inside, as-it-happens account of the way a new generation of human rights activists operates in a globalized world. Granito shows how each individual’s effort becomes a tiny grain of sand, a Granito to tip the scales of justice.