5 Must-See Latino Movies at DOC NYC, the Comic-Con of Documentaries

Co-produced by Univision Noticias and Pivot, Death by a Thousand Cuts turns the murder of a patrolling Dominican park ranger into a metaphor for the growing rift between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Shot in the border between the two nations, which already signals the way each country has dealt with their natural resources (Haiti’s mass deforestation has led to illegal logging on the Dominican side fueling the black market for charcoal), this documentary exposes the long-simmering tensions that have led to xenophobia and racism on either side of the border.

In 1982, an elite Guatemalan government squad massacred over 200 residents of the rural village of Dos Erres. The number merely added to the hundreds of thousands who lost their lives, or were disappeared during the country’s 36-year-long civil war. As it turns out, two young boys survived the massacre. More improbably, their story and survival was the only key to finding out precisely what happened back in 1982. Produced by Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall, Finding Oscar traces the story of finding one of the boys and the quest for justice that followed.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but what if the image is so horrific it leaves you with no words at all. Trisha Ziff’s documentary follows Enrique Metinides, whose obsession with taking pictures began as a child when he would photograph car accidents in his Mexico City neighborhood. That would later lead him to become a crime photographer, his gruesome if eye-catching images splashed across tabloids for over three decades. Exploring the morbid curiosity found in Metinides’ photos as well as in our responses to them, The Man Who Saw Too Much is as much about violent images as about the violence of images themselves.

Winner of DOC NYC’s inaugural Metropolis Jury Prize and Audience Award in 2010, To Be Heard is a verité-style film that follows three Bronx teens as they take a radical poetry workshop. Armed with the knowledge that their voice and their ideas matter, they are pushed to find the story they wish to write for themselves. Co-directed by, among others, Roland Legiardi-Laura (the late director of The Nuyorican Poet’s Café), To Be Heard is a powerful testament to the power of arts education, especially in inner-city neighborhoods.

Visitor’s Day is an observational documentary centered on Juan Carlos. At sixteen, the young man had already escaped an abusive home and lived in the streets of Mexico City before having found himself at IPODERAC. Founded in Puebla, the unique group home fosters a positive sense of community where everyone involved helps in the enterprise’s production of artisanal goat cheese. Learning the ropes of his newfound home, we slowly see Juan Carlos coming to terms with his new life. Will the upcoming visitor’s day disrupt his progress?