Headline Today: Guatemala is a war documentary. Two American journalists: Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon explore the internal armed conflict in Guatemala in 1982. After General Efraín Ríos Montt comes to power the few news about Guatemala that appear in the United States' media are apparently positive. The major American media advertises the image of Ríos Montt as a “born again Christian” with a mission to pacify Guatemala. Nothing is further from reality. The Reagan Republican administration hides from Americans the war aid that his administration continues to provide to the Guatemalan army, despite the explicit congressional ban. The international media remains silent about the dimensions of the war in Guatemala while Ríos Montt, with the approval of the local oligarchy, leads for 18 months the largest number of atrocities and human rights violations against the civilian population.
Allan Nairn

2026

Told almost entirely without spoken words, this film unfolds in the language of its subjects: Guatemalan Sign Language. In a country where more than 850,000 Deaf people receive little institutional support, silence becomes both a barrier and a form of connection. Through classrooms, homes, and everyday life, the film observes a community building its own means of understanding and belonging. Among those leading the way are Melkin, Dairy, and Jonathan, the teachers, students, and leaders within Guatemalan Deaf Ministries, where the language of hands has become the language of hope.
2025

From the shadows of a Guatemalan neighbourhood scared into silence, two sisters lead a luminous rebellion—unleashing joy, art, and radical truth in a fight for survival.
2025

2024

The Perechú family is afraid that the ancestral costume of their ancestors will disappear, but they see soccer as an opportunity to keep their culture and legacy alive.
2022

Relámpago Negro is a professional wrestler who lived in his own flesh the golden age of wrestling in Guatemala. 40 years later everything has changed, except his passion for the sport. Relámpago Negro tells us how his passion leads him to keep wrestling alive after so long, building a legacy for professional wrestling until this day.
2020

From Sierra de las Minas to Esquipulas, explore Guatemala's cultural and geological wealth, including ancient Mayan cities and other natural wonders.
2019

Widows is a documentary about the wives of pilots, who have been killed while working on the streets of Guatemala City. Being a van or taxi driver in the Central American country is considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.
2017

For consumers, bananas are a delicious and nutritious start to the day, a healthy snack and a fixture in our fruit bowls. For millions of residents in the banana lands, the production of bananas means social upheaval, violence and pesticide poisoning. Banana Land explores the origins of these disparate realities, and opens the conversation on how workers, producers and consumers can address this disconnect.
2016

In 1979 José Efraín Ríos Montt became a reborn Christian. He was offering a sermon when a group of soldiers burst into his Christian school, and asked him to lead a military coup in 1982. Francisco Chavez Raymundo and his sister were small children when Rios' political actions annihilated their community. In March, 2013 the lives of Francisco Chavez and Rios Montt converge in the same space. Rios is called upon to testify before Guatemalan justice and is confronted by a group of Mayan Ixiles, orphans and widows of the war, Francisco is one of them.
2016

Claudia Paz y Paz is the head of the Guatemalan Public Prosecutor’s Office. We follow her during her four-year mandate as the Attorney General of one of the world’s most dangerous countries. This documentary closely observes her attempts to break the downward spiral of a society where drug cartels, corruption and violence have become part of daily life. She manages to improve the country’s safety and justice issues but is met with much resistance. Her commitment to the rule of law is her strength as well as her destiny. At what price do four years of service as the Attorney General of Guatemala’s murder paradise come?
2015

MAXIMÓN - Devil or Saint is a documentary about the controversial Maya deity, also known as San Simon or the drinking and smoking saint of Guatemala. He is a mixture of ancient Maya beliefs and Christianity. The movie concentrates on the people who surround Maximón with their strong personalities, opinions and faith. The documentary gives us a rare view into the rituals and fiestas honoring Maximón. The cult of Maximón is flourishing because he performs miracles. He is also feared and despised because he is used to cast curses that can result in death. Ultimately, Maximón transcends the duality of good and evil, reflecting the Maya cosmovision in which everything in the universe co-exists.
2014

Every day dozens of decommissioned school buses leave the United States on a southward migration that carries them to Guatemala, where they are repaired, repainted, and resurrected as the brightly-colored camionetas that bring the vast majority of Guatemalans to work each day. Since 2006, nearly 1,000 camioneta drivers and fare-collectors have been murdered for either refusing or being unable to pay the extortion money demanded by local Guatemalan gangs. LA CAMIONETA follows one such bus on its transformative journey: a journey between North and South, between life and death, and through an unfolding collection of moments, people, and places that serve to quietly remind us of the interconnected worlds in which we live.
2013
Mayan Renaissance is a feature length film which documents the glory of the ancient Maya civilization, the Spanish conquest in 1519, 500 years of oppression, and the courageous fight of the Maya to reclaim their voice and determine their own future, in Guatemala and throughout Central America. The film stars 1992 Nobel Peace Laureate and Maya Leader Rigoberta Mencu Tum. All of the images, voices, expert commentary and music in the film come directly from Central America, the heart of the Mayan World.
2012

A story of destinies joined by Guatemala's past, and how a documentary film intertwined with a nation's turbulent history emerges as an active player in the present.
2011

Since 1999, more than 2,000 women have been murdered in Guatemala, with numbers escalating every year, yet lawmakers and government officials turn a blind eye. Powerful and uncompromising, Killer's Paradise uncovers an emotionally wrenching human rights tragedy, while exposing an inept judicial system that allows it to happen. After almost four decades of civil war, Guatemala is a troubled society, but it can also be seen as a microcosm of the pervasive violence and injustice against women worldwide.
2006
Denese Joy Becker, a manicurist living in Iowa, discovers she is indeed Dominga Sic Ruiz, a survivor from a 1982 Guatemalan massacre, when more than 200 people were killed in the small village of Rio Negro, after opposing the construction of a dam, sponsored by World Bank. She then tries to unveil the truth.
2003
Focuses on 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu, as she discusses the lack of human rights for the indigenous people of Guatemala and her commitment to the struggle for a more egalitarian society.
1992

A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.
1983

In this Traveltalk series short, we visit a region in Guatemala where the native Indian tribes live like their ancestors, without using most of the benefits of modern man. They not only grow their own vegetables and catch animals to eat, they also cultivate the plants they need to weave fabrics and make natural dyes from various berries and seeds.
1945