Ana Carrigan

This documentary goes back to the turn of the century to show how women shaped the nation’s history.

The film begins with the exhumation of four American women tortured, raped, and murdered by the right-wing government of El Salvador on December 2, 1980. The women — Dorothy Kazel, an Ursuline; Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Maryknoll mission sisters; and Jean Donovan, a young laywoman from Cleveland — were providing food, shelter, medical care and burial to the poor. They were targeted for assassination by a death squad within the U.S.-supported Salvadoran military as part of a policy of suppressing the poor and “liberation theology.” The award-winning documentary focuses primarily on the life of Jean Donovan through archival news footage, interviews, home movies, and diary readings.

Using rare footage from his own collection as well as interviews and photographs, this documentary profiles Óscar Romero, the Salvadoran priest whose championing of the poor and downtrodden against a corrupt government made him a global hero.

This documentary goes back to the turn of the century to show how women shaped the nation’s history.

The film begins with the exhumation of four American women tortured, raped, and murdered by the right-wing government of El Salvador on December 2, 1980. The women — Dorothy Kazel, an Ursuline; Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Maryknoll mission sisters; and Jean Donovan, a young laywoman from Cleveland — were providing food, shelter, medical care and burial to the poor. They were targeted for assassination by a death squad within the U.S.-supported Salvadoran military as part of a policy of suppressing the poor and “liberation theology.” The award-winning documentary focuses primarily on the life of Jean Donovan through archival news footage, interviews, home movies, and diary readings.

Using rare footage from his own collection as well as interviews and photographs, this documentary profiles Óscar Romero, the Salvadoran priest whose championing of the poor and downtrodden against a corrupt government made him a global hero.