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2 Screen read...combined
José Antonio Zúñiga, 31, stars in Mexico's most popular documentary ever...called “Presumed Guilty.”
It tells how he was exonerated for a murder he did not commit and released from prison.
With it, he has become a reluctant symbol of that nation's secretive legal system.
After his 2005 arrest for murder based on the testimony of a 17-year-old eyewitness, the victim's cousin, Zuniga was sentenced to 20 years.
“You get to jail and begin to realize that nobody is interested in what you have to say,” Zúñiga said. “Nobody is interested whether you have proof that it wasn’t you. Then you begin to realize that you’re a pattern, a number, a statistic.”
On 7 March, the film was pulled from movie screens by a judge's order after the witness in the case complained that he was filmed without his consent.
VARIETY reports that since opening 18 Feb, it has pulled in 43.3 million pesos ($3.6 million), selling nearly 1 million tickets. The figure puts it far past "Fahrenheit 9/11" for the previous record for a documentary at $2.2 million.
