Exposing Mexican Injustice
Antonio Zuñiga, a street vendor in Mexico City, spent three years in a Mexican prison for a murder he didn't commit. He'd still be one of the many Mexicans—probably thousands—rotting away in that country's notoriously dingy prisons were it not for the Australian filmmaker Geoffrey Smith and a married pair of attorneys, Roberto Hernandez and Layda Negrete, who turned Zuñiga's story into Presumed Guilty, a documentary winning raves on the festival circuit.
Hernandez and Negrete were able to obtain unprecedented permission from a local official to film Zuñiga's trial. The resulting movie has brought international scrutiny to Mexico's secretive courts, exposing not only jaw-dropping injustice but Mexican law enforcement officials' chilling indifference when confronted with evidence of a man's innocence.
