Suffern imbues the documentary with tension by visiting pivotal locations in Dos Erres, such as the well where most of the bodies were found, and scoring these images with interviews with two of the Kaibales who witnessed and participated in the massacre. One of them, Oscar Ramirez, would become the key piece to bring visibility to the case and, at the very least, partial justice.įind out where and when you can see by visiting our site.
Unexpectedly, two young boys, likely because of their lighter skin and colored eyes, were taken by two of the perpetrators and adopted as their own. The viciousness with which children and women met their death set this incident apart in a horrifying manner.
On December 6, 1982, following an incident in which the guerrillas had killed 21 soldiers, the US-backed government of Efraín Ríos Montt sent a special forces unit, known as the Kaibiles, to murder the entire population of the Dos Erres village, claiming they were guerrilla supporters.
Inspired by the trial that resulted from the testimony of a survivor, director Ryan Suffern set out to reconstruct the story of the Dos Erres massacre, (one of the most notorious operations during the conflict), by contrasting the accounts of those directly affected in the mystery-like narrative of his film Finding Oscar. Buried underground but present in the collective memory, the secrets of the brutal Guatemalan Civil War remained unspoken until a group of brave men and woman, many of whom were also searching for or mourning a loved one, took it upon themselves to begin the grueling quest for truth.