Skip to main content

User menu

Get Started
Your account
Cart
Support
Search

Main navigation

Films
About
Filmmakers
News

Secondary navigation

Get Started
Your account
Cart
Support
Search

Main navigation

Films
About
Filmmakers
News

Granito

How to Nail a Dictator

by

Paco de Onis

Pamela Yates

Year Released

2011

Film Length(s)

82 mins

Remote video URL

Streaming and Purchasing Options

Purchasing Options

Please select

Find on Kanopy

Watch Film

Introduction

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 on genocide charges.

Featured review

Granito...doesn't simply relate history; it is also part of history.

Stephen Holden

New York Times

Synopsis

Sometimes a film makes history; it doesn’t just document it. So it is with Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, the astonishing film by Pamela Yates. Part political thriller, part memoir, Yates transports us back in time through a riveting, haunting tale of genocide and returns to the present with a cast of characters joined by destiny and the quest to bring a malevolent dictator to justice.

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.

Awards and Screenings

Official Selection Sundance Film Festival, 2011

Emmy Nomination, Outstanding Investigative Journalism: Long Form, 2013

Opening Night Film, Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, 2011

Grand Prix for Best Creative Documentary, Paris International Human Rights Film Festival, 2011

Peace & Reconciliation Prize, The Geneva International Human Rights Festival, 2011

Jury Grand Prize, The Politics on Film Festival, 2011

Honorable Mention, Overseas Press Club Award, 2011

Founder's Award, Traverse City Film Festival, 2011

Director Commentary

For me Granito is a second chance to help right a terrible wrong.

I first went to Guatemala in 1982, to make a film about a hidden war, a film that would become my first feature length documentary, When the Mountains Tremble. We now know that hidden in that war was a genocide the Guatemalan military dictators committed against the Maya people. None of these war criminals have ever been brought to account, none punished. The anger I feel towards those Generals is almost unbearable. Today, more than 25 years later, When the Mountains Tremble and all the outtakes, are being used as forensic evidence in an international case against two of the generals who appeared in my original film.

Digging through the outtakes and preparing evidence for the court case made me realize that a story I had thought was over was very much alive and needed to be told. This sequel to “When the Mountains Tremble” would be called “Granito,” Spanish for tiny grain of sand. It is a concept I first learned in the Guatemalan highlands and carried it with me throughout my filmmaking life. It reflects the communal values that guide Maya communities and means that each of us can make a small contribution to positive social change, and together we can make great changes in favor of equality and human rights.

As fate would have it, the central character in “When the Mountains Tremble” was a 22-year-old Maya human rights defender named Rigoberta Menchú whose family members had been killed and who’d fled into exile. Ten years later she became the first indigenous woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Leveraging her stature as a Nobel Laureate, Rigoberta originated the case against the Generals that breathed new life into the quest for justice, and inspired the new film “Granito”.

As filming began on Granito, I was surprised to discover that Guatemalans had never given up on finding justice and uncovering the collective memory of their buried past. I wanted to find a way to highlight the courage of these empowered individuals. This sentiment is at the heart of “Granito”, which is how it became such a hopeful and transformative film. But for me, this new film held a deeper filmmaking challenge. After three decades of involvement with Guatemala, I had become a character in the story I needed to tell. This demanded that I examine my feelings and beliefs back when I started. I had to find a way to use the narrative power of documentary filmmaking to combine the beauty with the anger: the beauty of youthful idealism --- mine as well as the Guatemalan revolutionary movement’s, and the anger I now feel towards the war criminals who continue to flaunt their impunity.

I realize that the collective concept of Granito has permeated my filmmaking life, a journey I have traveled with Peter Kinoy, my fellow filmmaker and co-founder of Skylight Pictures. Peter was the Producer and Editor of When the Mountains Tremble and is the Editor of Granito. Together we’ve developed our approach to political documentary storytelling, embracing the same techniques of cinematography, scoring and editing used by narrative filmmakers to evoke drama and urgency.

Although Granito is rooted in the past --- how I got started, the choices I made along the way, and how what I thought I was doing back then has a different meaning today --- it is really a film about the future. Granito is meant to inspire the next generation of young, engaged filmmakers to see and embrace the power of documentary filmmaking to make a difference.

Features and Languages

Film Features

Subtitles
Resources for Educators

Subtitle/Caption Languages

Spanish

Promotional Material

Promotional Stills

Image

A poster for the New Day film Granito. A large, grainy, sepia-toned close up of a person’s face. They stare straight ahead with a serious expression and heavy shadows around their eyes. Behind the head to the left are two sepia toned strips of photos. One strip is a single person sitting in front of a window. The larger strip is a photo of a group of people sitting together. The text reads “Granito” in large, red to orange gradient with the words “How to nail a dictator” in small, white text underneath.

Subject Areas

Human Rights

Latino/Latina Studies

Law and Criminal Justice

Audience

College/University

High School

Middle School

Official Website

skylight.is/films/granito

Filmmakers

Paco de Onis

Paco de Onís grew up in several Latin American countries and is multi-lingual. He most recently released Granito (world premiere at Sundance 2011), a documentary detective story focused on the role of filmic and archival documentation in the prosecution of a genocide case against Guatemalan generals, and launching Granito: Every Memory Matters, a companion mixed media project developed at the BAVC Producer’s Institute 2010.

Contact Filmmaker View Profile

Pamela Yates

Pamela Yates is the Co-founder and Creative Director of Skylight, a non-profit company dedicated to creating feature length documentary films and digital media tools that advance awareness of human rights and the quest for justice by implementing multi-year outreach campaigns designed to engage, educate and activate social change.

Contact Filmmaker View Profile

Load More

Other New Day Films by Paco de Onis

View Profile

Borderland | The Line Within

The United States border is not just a geographical location - the border is everywhere.

New Day at AEJMC 2023 Conference in Washington, DC, Aug. 7-10

8 Films That Capture Oral Histories from Latin America and Latinx USA

Active Voice Profiles Two New Day Films as Changemakers

Borderland | The Line Within

500 Years

Mother Tongue

Rebel Citizen

Disruption

Dictator in the Dock

Living Broke in Boom Times

The Reckoning

State of Fear

Witness To War

Borderland | The Line Within

500 Years

When the Mountains Tremble

Mother Tongue

Rebel Citizen

Disruption

Dictator in the Dock

Living Broke in Boom Times

The Reckoning

State of Fear

Amma's Pride

Borderland | The Line Within

Whose Water?

America's Family

What These Walls Won't Hold

Children of Las Brisas

Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink

Las Abogadas: Attorneys on the Front Lines of the Migrant Crisis

Once Removed

Monkey Dance

California's Forgotten Children

The Other Side of the Wall

Loving With Three Hearts / Amar con tres corazones

Upstream, Downriver

Elephant Path / Njaia Njoku

Stop Time

Krzysztof Wodiczko: The Art Of Un-War

Reparations

Fireburn the Documentary

We Rise For Our Land

Two Rivers

Many Fires This Time: We the 100 Million

Borderland | The Line Within

America's Family

No Place To Grow

The Search

Massacre River: The Woman Without a Country

Waking Dream

25 Texans in the Land of Lincoln

The U Turn

America; I Too

El Cacao

Vida Diferida (Life, Deferred)

I Was Born in Mexico, But...

Gaucho del Norte

Tocando la Luz (Touch the Light)

Abrazos

Life On the Line

The Caretaker + The Mayor

Justice for My Sister

Higher Power

Benevolence: A Journey from Prison to Home

Juvenile: Five Stories

America's Family

What These Walls Won't Hold

Las Abogadas: Attorneys on the Front Lines of the Migrant Crisis

California's Forgotten Children

Haymarket: The Bomb, The Anarchists, The Labor Struggle.

SPLIT UP: Divorce and the TEEN Years

Taking Off the Mask

Stop Time

First To Go: Story Of The Kataoka Family

Soledad

Betrayal: When the Government Took Over the Teamsters Union

Refuge(e)

Alternative Facts: The Lies of Executive Order 9066

The U Turn