Fundraiser for El Regreso de Lencho

Monday, July 6
Admission: $20, open PBR bar from 6:30-7:30
Showtime: 6:30 - 10:00 pm
reservations are recommended

El REGRESO DE LENCHO, dir. Mario Rosales, 16mm/animation, Spanish,
Guatemala-USA, in post-production.

LENCHO, a 30-year-old artist and graffiti writer, is back in Guatemala after living a decade in New York. He organizes a collective of artists with five old friends and some new ones. The collective proposes to produce art-based projects with social impact and, for its first activity, they are organizing an art festival in Rabinal, a small village in the country’s highlands. Lencho earns a living doing documentary photography and writing reviews for an arts and culture magazine with his friend NECO.

Lencho’s work with the collective comes to the attention of the director of a secret social cleansing program in the national police. Seen as the leader of a terrorist organization, they order that Lencho’s activities be observed and documented.

Lencho also rekindles his relationship with CAMILA, the girlfriend of his youth, but little by little he gets involved with MAGALI, a poet who is also a member of his collective. Lencho works with Magali to develop an animation about a 12-year-old girl named Josefina that illustrates the recent rise of violence against women in the country. The animation is episodically visited over the course of the film. Lencho also tutors a young boy called EL CHINO in the convergence of art, protest and justice.

In a moment of self-doubt, Lencho decides to leave the city and travel to a town on the scenic Lake Atitlán where he questions his return to Guatemala and the current state of his life. Amidst the tranquility of the lake, the terrifying memories of the death of his father, a journalist during the civil war, reemerge.

When Lencho finds out about the 2005 discovery of an ex-national police archive with 80 million documents about the 30 years of civil war in Guatemala, he feels as if an old wound has reopened. He realizes that one of the reasons why he decided to return was to investigate the case of his father’s murder.

As he attempts to realize his first project with the collective and bring his father’s case to justice, Lencho is persecuted illicitly by the police but doesn’t realize it. He has no idea of the danger he is facing.

Series of Teasers for the upcoming feature film El REGRESO de Lencho on youtube.