A new documentary by Pamela Yates about the civil war in Guatemala, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, is due in theaters September 14, 2011. Here is the description from the website:

GRANITO is a story of destinies joined by Guatemala’s past, and how a documentary film intertwined with a nation’s turbulent history emerges as an active player in the present. In GRANITO our characters sift for clues buried in archives of mind and place and historical memory, seeking to uncover a narrative that could unlock the past and settle matters of life and death in the present. Each of the five main characters whose destinies collide in GRANITO are connected by the Guatemala of 1982, then engulfed in a war where a genocidal “scorched earth” campaign by the military exterminated nearly 200,000 Maya people. Now, as if a watchful Maya god were weaving back together threads of a story unraveled by the passage of time, forgotten by most, our characters become integral to the overarching narrative of wrongs done and justice sought that they have pieced together, each adding their granito, their tiny grain of sand, to the epic tale.

The cast includes 1992 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Rigobert Menchú. Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote, “Granito: How to Nail a Dictator… doesn’t simply relate history; it is also part of history.” Click on the website link here to watch the film trailer.

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