Angus Macqueen - Cocaine (2005)

  Three dramatic and intimate films about cocaine, taking viewers on a chilling journey from the coca fields and cocaine producers of the Peruvian Andes, via drugs gangs in the favelas of Rio, to the man who stands behind over half of Colombia’s drug trade.

This trilogy presents the drug as a commodity - revealing how current drug policies are turning lives and communities into nightmares...

"Cocaine" shows how the vast sums of illegal money involved are damaging individuals, cities and, finally, nation states.

Programme one, Viva La Coca, journeys into the world of the Peruvian coca farmers, who are totally dependent on the paltry money they make from growing coca leaves, and the cocaine-makers, who turn the leaves into ‘dandruff of the Andes.’

Focusing on the Zavala family who have farmed coca for decades and are now being driven from their fields by a US-sponsored military programme. Now almost penniless, Edgar Zavala watches as his daughter is forced to the edge of prostitution, and warns that if this goes on farmers will be driven back into the arms of the guerrillas.

Framed by extraordinary access to the drugs gangs in Rio, programme two, Leo and Ze, is a brutal and unsettling story of violence, poverty and wasted lives. Ze, a reformed gang leader, tries to help his nephew Leo to do the same. Filmed over several months, the film features explicit footage of guns, drug abuse and death leading to a horrifying conclusion.Programme three, An Honest Citizen, follows Maria Cristina Chirolla, Head of the Attorney General’s anti-money laundering office, as she struggles to fight the extraordinary reach of drug money in Colombia, involving leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and a national government undermined by corruption at every level.