—CAUSE
Drug Trafficking—CLIENT
Abogacia foundationCHALLENGE
Drug trafficking exists in every culture around the world. Primarily affecting the most vulnerable people in society, the consequences are as wide-ranging as they are devastating (including increased levels of poverty, crime, gang violence, domestic and sexual abuse, homelessness, and child neglect to name just a few).
OUR TAKE
Fundación Abogacía Española is a non-profit organisation that promotes and defends human rights. Among their services, they provide legal counsel for Spanish citizens that are deprived of their liberty abroad for drug trafficking felonies. During the past few years, in addition to legal advice, they have also developed prevention campaigns. In this context we produced MULA, a short documentary, told in the protagonists’ voices, which narrates the story of 4 people arrested for drug trafficking. The story attempts to shed more light on the dire consequences of these acts, in the hopes of decreasing the number of people recruited to the drug trafficking underworld.
THE RESULT
During the development of this project, we had the opportunity to work together with the real-life protagonists on the stories. We created a series of questions which were posed to all the interviewees, then later, a single narrative was strung together. By way of editing, we united the 4 individual stories into a single story, generating a parallelism in which all of them end up, in one way or another, suffering the same consequences.
To avoid victimization or sensationalism, the chose to animate the characters of the short film. Finally, we selected an unempathetic music score that was not seeking to capitalize on the viewer’s emotions. Instead, the music accompanied the rhythm of the narrative and allowed the viewer to get involved in a more logical, rather than emotional, way. Collaborating with Implicate for Fundación Abogacía during 2019, this short film had a private premiere and is also being more widely distributed as part of the campaign’s plan.