Director Spotlight: 'Narco Cultura' Explores how Drug Traffickers Shape Mexican Pop Culture David Burger - The Salt Lake Tribune
go to original January 19, 2013

Shaul Schwarz on "Narco Cultura" Sundance Film Festival 2013 (sff)

In the United States, narcissistic musicians say all the time that music is a life-or-death matter.

In Mexico, some musicians say the same thing, but in a literal sense.

Shaul Schwarz is the director of "Narco Cultura," screening in this year’s U.S. Documentary Competition in the Sundance Film Festival. An Israel native who has gained fame through photojournalism, Schwarz has dived in the deep end with his first feature.

Just as Americans once celebrated criminals such as Billy the Kid and Jesse James, Schwarz argues that some Mexicans glamorize the narco-traffickers as outlaws awash in fame and money.

Musicians are largely responsible for the image that obscures the life-and-death hazards of the Drug War, much the way many American rappers in the late 1980s and early ’90s sought to paint life as a "gangsta" on the mean streets as something to aspire to.

He chose two main figures to help tell his story: a Los Angeles narco-corrido singer and a Juárez crime-scene investigator.

Schwarz answered questions posed by The Salt Lake Tribune about his reactions to his film accepted at the festival, how he gained access and how photojournalism, while different, helped his foray into film.

Read more at The Salt Lake Tribune.

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