A murderer who dismembered his brother, and in the loneliness of prison he became a painter (LU.CU.MA); a Mexican drag queen, a wrestling champion in one of the most macho countries on the continent (Cassandro, el Exótico); an Auschwitz prisoner who has made the suits of the presidents of the United States of the last sixty years (Martin Greenfield); the man who gives voice to Mario Bros, the most famous plumber in video games (Charles Martinet); a Mexican woman who prepares Haitian food in the border city of Tijuana so that Haitian immigrants feel less desolate (Fausta Rosalía); a Spanish woman who owns one of the most monumental collections of Latin music (Alejandra Fierro Eleta, better known as Gladys Palmera); a tap dancer who lost his right leg to bone cancer, who hasn't stopped dancing (Evan Ruggiero).

And the list goes on. In less than a decade telling stories on video, Mariano Carranza's trunk of characters is amazing. Each one with its tragedies, conquests and complexities. But who is it? What are your concerns? Why does he do what he does? This is the story of a man from Lima, with Huanuco roots, who has lived in New York for twelve years, with his eyes always set on Latin America.

For three and a half years, Mariano has been producing mini-documentaries for Great Big Story, a section of the CNN network that has the challenge of telling in-depth stories in less than four minutes on the Internet. Apparently, they have been doing well: this year they received their third Emmy nomination.

While studying at New York University Film School, Mariano joined Vice—the Canadian television, radio, and digital media company that started out as a magazine—where he rose from intern to associate producer.

“The idea of ​​Vice is to do smart things stupid and stupid things smart,” he says from Brooklyn.

Curiosity, of course, sprouted long before, on family trips, and as a result of his closeness to Tito Bonicelli, a friend of his brother and screenwriter of Días de Santiago (2004). At the age of 16, before finishing school, he traveled to Iquitos and photographed the exotic market of Belén. It earned him to win a national school contest. At the age of 18, he said goodbye to Peru, a homeland to which he returns at least once a year to hug his loved ones, have some 'chelas' with the 'patas', but also to record.

Proof of this is the documentary about Los Saicos, that sixties band, born in Lince, whose legend gave them the label of being the creators of punk. Or The 124-foot Bridge Woven by Hand where he filmed the construction of the Q'eswachaka, that rope bridge that is renewed every year over the Apurimac River. Known stories, to a lesser or greater extent around here, but that enliven the eyes of the 'gringo' public. In a way, he is an audiovisual ambassador.

“It would be selfish of me to say that they are my stories. They belong to their characters. I just help them tell them in the best way.”

Indeed, Mariano Carranza is a kind of curator. Their stories are narrated by their own protagonists, with very fast cuts, but with a high sense of aesthetics. And why not, of innovation?

In 2013, when Uruguay became the first country to legalize marijuana, he smoked a 'bat' with his reporter in front of then-president José Mujica. Years later, he visited the facilities of the Harvard Brain Bank, a research center dedicated to the study of neural connections and brain disorders. And at that time she accompanied a group of Bolivian women, in La Paz, who climb snow-capped mountains to empower themselves.

“The documentary is a very powerful social weapon. It puts the spotlight in places where they normally aren't, and gives a voice to those who aren't usually represented,” says Mariano Carranza, the man behind the camera.