State of Fear

Photo: Sengo Pérez

To rent this film, please contact Skylight Pictures

For the past 25 years, Pamela Yates, Peter Kinoy and Skylight Pictures have set a gold standard for elegant, intelligent, hard-hitting documentaries on Latin America, films that include the Oscar-winning Witness To War. State of Fear uses the findings of the Peruvian Truth Commission to detail that nation’s 20-year reign of terror, beginning in 1980 with the violent Maoist guerrilla cult, Shining Path, whose bloody doings were met with an equally violent reaction from Peru’s democratically elected government. Once the terrorists were subdued, fear of their return was used as an excuse by President Alberto Fujimori to institutionalize absolute power and propagate corruption (revealed to hilarious effect in THE VLADI-VIDEOS). The film, however, transcends its immediate subject to become a cautionary tale of our current global war on terror. Karen Cooper – Film Forum

“A brilliant and moving film, which is both a portrait of Peru and a chronicle of terror and response — fanaticism, bravery, heroism, abject fear and the way everyone is affected by such events. It is what Orwell called the aim of great art, which is both imaginative in craftsmanship and politically committed at its heart.” — Paul Theroux.

“So visually stunning it could double as a travelogue — if it weren’t for the social justice issues that drive the story.” Anne-Marie O’Connor, Los Angeles Times