Director: Paula Heredia
Producers: John Hoffman, Daniel Sznajderman, Larry Garvin
Description:
Imelda Cortez, aged 19, arrives at the hospital bleeding after giving birth in a latrine. She is handcuffed to the hospital bed, arrested on suspicion of abortion, and later charged with attempted and aggravated murder. Imelda's only hope at freedom is a local citizen’s movement that dares to defend women who are persecuted under El Salvador's total ban on abortion.
Biography:
Paula Heredia is a Salvadoran director and editor, who has been making documentary films for over 20 years. She has won numerous awards, including the Eddie Award® for editing Unzipped and an Emmy® for HBO’s In Memoriam, NYC 9/11/01. Her work includes Toucan Nation, The Alzheimer’s Project, and The Couple in the Cage, which was acquired for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art of New York. Since 1996, through the program "Digital Cinema" of Casa Clementina, a non-profit arts and education organization, she has influenced and provided technical, aesthetic, and executive development training to emerging filmmakers.
John Hoffman has decades of experience developing, producing, and directing documentaries. He was part of HBO Documentary Films and served as Executive VP of Documentaries and Specials at Discovery Networks. He is the founder of the non-profit The Public Good Projects, where he made the National Geographic documentary Sleepless in America. Projects he has been involved in include The Weight of the Nation, and Last Letters Home: Voices of American Troops From the Battlefields of Iraq. His work has received numerous awards, including five Prime Time Emmy® awards, a Peabody Award and two DuPont-Columbia awards.
Daniel Sznajderman has worked in film production for many years. He was associate producer on Animal Planet’sToucan Nation. He has also been an assistant editor in projects like ESPN's 30 for 30 series and documentaries like The Invisible Extinction. Other credits include working on the production of docuseries like CNN’s Morgan Spurlock: Inside Man, The African Americans and An Art That Nature Makes: The Work of Rosamond Purcell.
Larry Garvin has been an entrepreneur and financial management consultant for 30 years. In Suchitoto he oversees Fundación Casa Clementina, a non-profit focused on promoting and disseminating art, distributing scholarships for vocational and university studies, and giving young people access to communication and information technology resources. His experience in media production includes being part of award-winning documentaries like La Pajara Pinta, Africa Rising, Slavery and the Lawand Alborada.
