Documentary focused on Venezuelan rebel Óscar Pérez to be shown in Salt Lake City

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The documentary "Oscar" by Vanessa Whaite, focused on a Venezuelan rebel, will be shown in Salt Lake City on Saturday.
• Óscar Pérez accused the regime of Nicolás Maduro of criminal activities, and he was killed at the hands of Venezuelan forces in 2018.
• The film premiered in April in Spain and has had only limited showings.

SALT LAKE CITY — A Venezuelan special forces officer who later rebelled against the regime of Nicolás Maduro and died at the hands of Venezuelan security forces in 2018 is the focus of a documentary to be shown in Salt Lake City on Saturday.

"Oscar," directed by Venezuelan American filmmaker Vanessa Whaite, tells the story of Óscar Pérez, who in 2017 accused the government of then-President Maduro of being linked to drug trafficking and criminal activity. He went public inside Venezuela with his charges and was later tracked by Venezuelan forces and killed in a showdown on Jan. 15, 2018, though he had attempted to surrender.

"Óscar Pérez was the first visible face of the Venezuelan state apparatus to say out loud, from inside, that the regime operates as a criminal organization," Whaite said. "This film is arriving while the story continues to unfold. International investigations remain active. The courts are hearing the case. The evidence still matters, and the questions Óscar raised continue to shape the present."

The film premiered last April in Madrid, Spain, and will be shown Saturday at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. at The Megaplex at The Gateway in Salt Lake City, 400 W. 200 South. Tickets are available online.

Norely López, who now lives in Utah but is originally from Venezuela, arranged for the film to come here through her work in the state with the Blanca Nieves Sierra Foundation, a human rights organization. She saw the film, which has had only limited showings, in Miami.

"I think all Venezuelans sympathize with what he did," she said. She hopes the showings bring the story of Pérez to the broader public.

The film taps audio recordings by Pérez, video messages he recorded for his kids, testimony from family and those he worked with, citizen footage from Venezuela and more.

"Together, they reconstruct the evidence behind one of the defining political stories of modern Latin America," reads a press release about the showing. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles.

According to CNN, Pérez in 2017 dropped stun grenades over the Venezuelan Supreme Court and Interior Ministry in Caracas in a stolen police helicopter as part of his efforts against the Maduro government. He also vowed to overthrow Venezuela's socialist government.

U.S. forces invaded Venezuela on Jan. 3 and removed Maduro from the country. The former Venezuelan leader now faces drug-trafficking charges in the United States.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Tim Vandenack

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Tim Vandenack covers immigration, multicultural issues and Northern Utah for KSL. He worked several years for the Standard-Examiner in Ogden and has lived and reported in Mexico, Chile and along the U.S.-Mexico border.