Mariano Carranza was in high school when he won a national photography contest with some black and white images of the Belén market in Iquitos. It was those photographs that allowed him to fulfill his dream of studying at New York University (NYU), a place where Scorsese, the Coen brothers, Jim Jarmusch and many other directors he admires passed.

Passion for Stories

'Moving images are a very powerful weapon. A video, a documentary, a report can literally change lives', says Mariano. A film that marked his was Días de Santiago, by Josué Méndez. Sitting in the Barranco cinematograph, he saw the streets of his city on the big screen and felt inspired and motivated to study film. At that time, I never imagined that I would have the incredible privilege of traveling and telling stories for a living.

He was an associate producer of documentaries at VICE when, at the end of 2013, the world turned its eyes on Uruguay when it became the first country to legalize the sale and cultivation of marijuana. So, Mariano had an idea. 'I went to my boss and told him: we should make a documentary about the new law and smoke a joint with Mujica,' he recalls. The idea became a documentary and meeting the president of Uruguay, one of his best memories.

Three years ago, Mariano joined Great Big Story, a CNN division specialized in making short documentaries with a clear goal: to discover and film surprising and unusual stories. 'What I like the most about working there is the passion and dedication that the team puts into each video we make,' he says. And all that effort has not been in vain, as it led them to be nominated for an Emmy a year ago for the series The Great Big Show.

The Latin American Call

It has been a long time since Mariano settled in New York to live the dream of being a documentary filmmaker. But Peru has not been out of his life. Not only because he returns every year, but because Peruvian and Latin American stories are a constant in his career.

'Peru is an inexhaustible source of inspiration and stories,' says Mariano, and it is clear that his favorite pieces take place on our continent. The first documentary he directed for VICE was about Los Saicos, forerunners of punk. He also documented the story of Luis Cuevas Manchego, a Peruvian sentenced for murder and other crimes who changed the dagger for the brush and became a plastic artist. And since working on Great Big Story, his taste for stories from Latin America has only increased. The short documentary about Cassandro the 'Exotic', an openly gay Mexican wrestler, who challenges machismo in this sport; or that of the Cholitas Climbers, a group of women of indigenous heritage who climb mountains in Bolivia, are just a couple of examples.

For Mariano, being a documentary filmmaker is having a master key to be able to enter people's lives. And, in that sense, it is a job that is taken with great responsibility. He is convinced that objectivity does not exist, and that honesty is the most important thing to tell a story and do it justice.

But although he has dedicated his career to documentary production, fiction has also always been present for Mariano. 'I don't know if the long documentary or the long fiction will come first, but, eventually, both will come', he assures, and we can only be anxious about the stories that it will reveal to us.