Guañuna

On Saturday, January 6, 2007, Paúl Guañuna asked his parents for permission to go out with his friends to a hip-hop concert in Quito. When Paul and two other friends were walking back home, they stopped at a wall and wrote the word mapa, a diminutive of mapahuiras (dirty butter in Kichwa). A neighbor thought they were tagging and called the police who arrested the teenagers. The next day Paul's lifeless body was found at the bottom of a ravine by his father. Since then, he led an intense social struggle to seek justice, which brought together hundreds of young people from the city's urban tribes, achieving a 20-year prison sentence for the three police officers involved. However, after three years in jail they were released. Brave and pertinent as ever, Guañuna poignantly directed by David Lasso, portrays the tireless struggle of a father, thousands of young people, and a wounded community, to expose racism, authoritarianism, and the entrenched impunity that persists in Ecuadorian society.