For over 20 years, global economic forces have been dismantling public education in Mexico, but always in the constant shadow of popular resistance...

Granito de arena is the story of that resistance – the story of hundreds of thousands of public schoolteachers whose grassroots, non-violent movement took Mexico by surprise, and who have endured brutal repression in their 25-year struggle for social and economic justice in Mexico's public schools. A sixty-minute documentary, Granito de Arena places the Mexican teachers’ struggle in a global context, clearly spelling out the relationship between economic globalization and the worldwide public education crisis.

Award-winning Seattle filmmaker, Jill Freidberg (This is What Democracy Looks Like, 2000), spent two years in southern Mexico documenting the efforts of over 100,000 teachers, parents, and students fighting to defend the country’s public education system from the devastating impacts of economic globalization. Freidberg combines footage of strikes and direct actions with  25 years worth of never-before-seen archival images to deliver a compelling and unsettling story of  resistance, repression, commitment, and solidarity.