The documentary Narco Cultura paints a sobering picture from both sides of the U.S./ Mexico border, in a drug war that has claimed more than 60,000 victims in the past seven years. The film cuts back and forth between gruesome murders in Mexico and the culture of narcocorridos — ballads that revel in the exploits of drug cartels. Filmmaker Shaul Schwarz says he was fascinated by the juxtaposition: "This two-sided monster and how it's so linked and so connected and so bizarre." As a photojournalist, the Israeli-born New Yorker had covered conflicts and disasters around the world for National Geographic, Newsweek and other publications. For his first film, he and his sound engineer traveled to Juarez, just over the border from El Paso, Texas. Another night, another murder. Behind the yellow police tape, family members wail, and onlooking children converse about AK-47s and the victim being "liquidated." As always, crime-scene investigator Richi Soto is there to collect the bodies. "People hear the sirens and see us as angels of death," the soft-spoken Soto says as he drives through the streets of his hometown. He wears a mask over his face to conceal his identity from dealers and their informants and hit men. We see him tagging bodies in the morgue, collecting bullets and classifying evidence that simply gets warehoused. Cut to Los Angeles, where a young nightclub crowd is partying and singing along to the latest narcocorrido. "We're bloodthirsty, crazy, and we like to kill," they sing. Onstage, the boisterous members of the group Los Bukanas de Culiacan wear bandoliers of bullets and brandish a prop bazooka. The group's enthusiastic lead singer and songwriter, Edgar Quintero, is the film's other protagonist, a young Mexican-American born in L.A...more
Here's the official trailer for the documentary:
http://youtu.be/UaJ_hru9Qk4
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