Igualada: Refusing to Know Your Place directed by Juan Mejía Botero (Death by a Thousand Cuts), chronicles Francia Márquez’s extraordinary journey from rural grassroots activist to history-making campaign as Colombia’s first female and first Black presidential candidate.
Filmed over 15 years, Mejia was granted unprecedented access to capture Márquez’s transformation into a powerful force for change, inspiring millions to reimagine their nation’s future and their place within it. In a time when many find themselves disillusioned and alienated by traditional politics, Mejía’s empowering story of a Black woman who dares to challenge the status quo of racial and socio-economic disparities results in an uplifting portrait of resistance, resilience, and transfiguration.
The documentary made its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festivaland went on to win the Jury Award at the Bergen International Film Festival (2024), the Jury Award at the Cine Las Americas International Film Festival (2024), and the Audience Award at the Films for Future Festival in Zürich (2024). The documentary was an official selection at the Seattle International Film Festival (2024), the Human Rights Film Festival in Berlin (2024), and the Palm Springs International Film Festival (2024).
It will make its national broadcast debut on POV on PBS on Monday, July 7, 2025 at 10pm, and will be available to stream through October 5, 2025, at pbs.org and on the PBS App.
Shot in a cinéma verité style, Mejía Botero’s film follows Márquez’s rise from a local leader in La Toma, a small rural town in Colombia’s Pacific Southwest and home to over a quarter-million descendants of enslaved Africans. Rich in natural resources, the region is frequently targeted by multinational corporations and paramilitary groups. It was during a 2020 funeral for five murdered sugarcane workers that Márquez decided to launch her unlikely campaign.
The film begins in 2009, when Mejía Botero first began documenting Márquez’s efforts as a young land defender. The resulting footage reveals a rare, long-term portrait of a movement and a leader in the making—culminating in a watershed moment in Colombian history.
With the support of a small, tireless team, Márquez’s grassroots campaign—originally intended to spotlight the struggles of Afro-Colombian, rural, and Indigenous communities—quickly grew into a national movement. Her motto, rooted in African roots, declared: “I am because we are.”
Despite threats to her life, Márquez defiantly reclaimed the term “igualada”—a pejorative used to belittle those who demand rights seen as above their “place”—and she catapults the struggle for a more just Colombia into the upper echelons of power, rose to become a leading candidate in a broad progressive coalition led by Senator and former guerrilla fighter Gustavo Petro.
Juan Mejía Botero, director of Igualada: Refusing to Know Your Place said, “When Francia called me in 2020 to say she was launching a presidential campaign. I thought she was joking—a Black woman from a rural community, aspiring to lead in a country built on racism, elitism, and misogyny? But she was serious. I told her: ‘If this is real, we need to document it—it’s going to be historic no matter how far it goes.’ She hesitated, then said something I’ll never forget: ‘They don’t make films about women like me or communities like mine… so go for it.’
“Igualada: Refusing to Know Your Place is a film about hope—and belief in democracy. And wow, do we need that right now. If Francia’s unimaginable campaign—and her becoming Colombia’s first Black Vice President—was possible in a country like ours, then it’s possible almost anywhere. We have to believe that. We have to allow ourselves to dream again. And we can’t get tired of fighting.”
Watch the official trailer for Igualada: Refusing to Know Your Place.