POV, the multi-Emmy® and Peabody award-winning documentary series, presents Igualada: Refusing to Know Your Place, directed by Juan Mejía Botero (Death by a Thousand Cuts), which chronicles Francia Márquez’s extraordinary journey from rural grassroots activist to history-making presidential campaign in Colombia. The powerful documentary was produced by Juan Mejía Botero, Juan E. Yepes, Daniela Alatorre Benard, and Sonia Serna Botero.
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.
After a widely acclaimed world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Igualada: Refusing to Know Your Place made its national broadcast debut on POV on Monday, July 7, 2025 at 10pm (check local listings), and is available to stream through October 5, 2025, at pbs.org and on the PBS App. Now in its 38th season, POV is the longest-running non-fiction series.
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.
Igualada: Refusing to Know Your Place made its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. It won 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). Other key accolades include making the IDA Documentary Awards Shortlist (2025), the SIMA Award for Best Systemic Change Documentary (2025), nominations for the Cinema Tropical Awards’ Best U.S. Latinx Film, and One World Media Awards’ Best Documentary, and Special Selections at DOC NYC Selects and HotDocs Doc Soup.
Source: Human Pictures co-production with No Ficción, Cine las Americas, PBS
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