Burden of Peace

DIRECTOR: Joey Boink  COUNTRIES: Guatemala, Netherlands   YEARR: 2015   LANGUAGE(S): Spanish, English   SUBTITLES: English   RUNNING TIME: 76 min  

SECTION: International Forum 2015

SYNOPSIS

Guatemala, 2010: The human rights activist Claudia Paz y Paz is appointed attorney general in one of the most violent countries in the world. What nobody could have imagined happens: The slight woman with a gentle voice declares war on corruption and impunity in her country. But she has powerful enemies.

For four years, Joey Boink’s film team followed Claudia Paz y Paz as she carried out her Sisyphean task. The attorney general did achieve something historical: The clear-up rates of the law enforcement agencies increased exponentially – corrupt officials had their goose cooked. In 2012, Ríos Montt was charged with genocide and sentenced to 80 years in jail – it was the first time a former head of state had been charged with genocide in his own country. But as the old elites took power again while the case was still ongoing, Claudia Paz y Paz risked going from beacon of hope to tragic heroine…

JOEY BOINK
Joey Boink, born in 1984, is a cum laude political sciences graduate. In 2004 he co-founded Framewerk, an audiovisual production company based in Amsterdam. Poldox, a documentary course he initiated at the University of Amsterdam, won the Eye Institute Film Education Award in 2011.

FILMOGRAPHY
Burden of Peace (2015)

SCRIPT: Joey Boink, Sander Wirken (Research)   PRODUCERS: Bart Voorsluis, Annemiek Munneke   EDITOR: Ruben van der Hammen 

PRODUCTION: Framewerk   WORLD SALES: Christine Klaver, SHK Distribution