Reportero

A veteran reporter and photojournalist chronicles the interconnected stories of a rapidly changing city on the Mexican-American border.

Reportero 01
Series
POV
Premiere Date
January 7, 2013
Length
60 minutes
Funding Initiative
Open Call
Diversity Development Fund
  • Nominated laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    2013 News and Documentary Emmy Awards-Outstanding Informational Programming—Long-Form
    • Bernardoruiz
    Producer/Director

    Bernardo Ruiz

    A writer and documentary filmmaker born in Guanajuato, Mexico and raised in Brooklyn, Bernardo Ruiz founded Quiet Pictures in 2007 to produce independent documentary projects at the intersection of journalism and film. He is the director/producer of American Experience: Roberto Clemente (PBS, 2008), winner of the NCLR ALMA Award for Outstanding Made… Show more for Television Documentary. Most recently, he directed and produced Reportero (POV, 2013), a gripping look in to the world of Mexican journalists who cover organized crime and political corruption. Before starting Quiet Pictures, Ruiz worked as a freelance director/producer for a variety of media outlets, including PBS, National Geographic, Planet Green and MTV, among others. He studied documentary photography with Joel Sternfeld at Sarah Lawrence College. Before embarking on a career in documentary, he taught as an artist-in-residence in New York City public schools through Learning through an Expanded Arts Program (L.E.A.P.) He grew up in a household where education was a frequent topic of conversation — his mother has been a teacher of high-school Spanish for nearly 40 years. Show less

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    The Film

    Reportero follows a veteran reporter and his colleagues at Zeta, a Tijuana-based independent newsweekly, as they stubbornly ply their trade in one of the deadliest places in the world for members of the media. In Mexico, more than 50 journalists have been slain or have vanished since December 2006, when former President Felipe Calderón came to power and launched a government offensive against the country’s powerful drug cartels and organized crime groups. As the drug war intensifies and the risks to journalists become greater, will the free press be silenced?

    An Official Selection of the 2012 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and IDFA. A co-production of Quiet Pictures and ITVS. Funding provided by the Ford Foundation, the Sundance Documentary Fund and Cinereach. A co-presentation with Latino Public Broadcasting.

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