Cocaine Prison
From Bolivia's overcrowded San Sebastian prison, cocaine industry runners reveal the hypocrisy of the drug economy in Bolivia. Screening in collaboration with the Bolivian festival Bajo Nuestra Piel.
In Bolivia, the big drug barons go free while small-time criminals like Hernan and Mario can spend years in the overcrowded San Sebastian Prison. They haven’t even been convicted yet, and their trial is postponed over and over again. Outside the prison walls, the teenage Deisy works with lawyers to get her brother Hernan released. This calm, almost fiction-film-style story gives names and faces to the errand boys of the drug trade. Footage of Deisy’s powerless search for justice is interspersed with scenes from life in jail. Director Violeta Ayala managed to smuggle cameras into the jail, which her protagonists use to film poignant scenes.