COCAINE PRISON – Los Burritos
Bolivia, 2017
Quechua and Spanish with English subtitles | 76 min
Director: Violeta Ayala
Additional screening ($13/$11):
Thursday, September 6th
6:30pm @ SFU Woodward’s | Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
Hernan Torrez and his sister Deisy are teenagers going to high school in Cochabamba with dreams of starting a band. Driven by the desire to buy a drum kit, Hernan agrees to carry two kilograms of cocaine across the border to Argentina. After he’s caught by border police, he’s sent to the notorious San Sebastian prison, a scarcely staffed, open-air facility of over 700 inmates. Filmmakers Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw taught English classes inside San Sebastian and gained remarkable access by putting cameras into the hands of prisoners. We follow Hernan and his friend Mario on the inside and Deisy on the outside as the film reveals a unique perspective on the ordinary people of the drug trade—those who suffer the punishment while the bosses operate freely. Thom Powers, TIFF
A passionate, compelling and fascinating documentary that will push audiences to explore the idea of a legalized drug industry. – Jen McNeely, SheDoesTheCity
Audience Award, Cinélatino – Rencontres de Toulouse Film Festival, 2018
Los Burritos sigue las vidas interconectadas de Hernán y su hermana Deisy, dos adolescentes viviendo en Cochabamba que sueñan con formar una banda. Motivado por su deseo de comprar un kit de batería, Hernán transporta dos kilos de cocaína ilegalmente a Argentina. Cuando lo atrapan, la policía lo manda a la notoria prisión de San Sebastián, donde los prisioneros ordenan. Los directores Violeta Ayala y Dan Fallshaw filmaron por cinco años, dentro y fuera de San Sebastián, siguiendo las historias de Hernán y Deisy y revelando una mirada íntima hacia el narcotráfico internacional y sus víctimas “desechables”.
Filmography: The Fight (2017), The Bolivian Case (2015), Stolen (2009)
Violeta Ayala is an artist/writer/filmmaker from Bolivia. Her first feature documentary Stolen premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (2009), has screened in more than 80 festivals worldwide, winning fourteen awards along the way. In 2006 Ayala began her collaboration with Dan Fallshaw in North Africa on Between the Oil and the Deep Blue Sea an investigative documentary about corruption in the oil industry set in Mauritania. While at university Ayala made Proyecto Vila-Vila (2005), a documentary about cervical cancer and indigenous women in Bolivia. Ayala has a degree in Broadcast Journalism from Charles Sturt University, Australia. Ayala is an Alumnus of the Film Independent Documentary Lab, the Berlinale Talent Campus and a Tribeca Film Institute Fellow.
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