03/21/12 – San Diego’s Latino Film Festival wrapped up this weekend on Sunday, March 18. Hosted by the Media Arts Center of San Diego, the festival ran from March 8 to March 18. One of the films that was shown on the final day was a documentary titled Reportero, which was run as a special advance screening for the festival.
Directed by Bernard Ruíz, Reportero follows a veteran reporter and his colleagues at ZETA, a Tijuana based newspaper, during a time when Mexico has become one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Since 2006, there have been over 40 journalists who have been murdered or gone missing nationwide. As a result, many mainstream media outlets now openly self-censor in an effort to protect their staffs.
The documentary follows the ZETA staff in Tijuana as they “cope with the daily dangers of uncovering the illicit ties between power, money, and drugs in Mexico’s largest border city,” cites Fronteras. Through interviews and archival footage, the documentary reports on many of the unpunished crimes committed against the staff.
ZETA’s current editor, Adela Navarro Bello, spoke of her former editor’s wishes to close the paper. “I asked him not to close it. To keep the paper going…I told him we shouldn’t allow organized crime to win and destroy our paper,” she said in Fronteras. Reportero documents the compelling story about a newspaper which refused to stay silent, when much mainstream media did, despite the risks involved.
According to IMDb, the film was released in Mexico on February 15, 2012, and will be released in the United States later in the year. For a sneak peak of the film, click here.
(Written by kristinjones28)
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