Sarah Minter’s Nadie es inocente (1987) is a raw, experimental hybrid of documentary and fiction that captures the lives of the Mierdas Punks, a rebellious youth gang in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl (“Neza”), on the outskirts of Mexico City. Shot on U-matic video between 1984 and 1986, the film follows Juan “el Kara” and his peers as they rail against the state, religion, and traditional family structures with a punk ethos rooted in disillusionment and decay.
 
Through psychedelic imagery, unscripted moments, and disjointed editing, Minter blurs reality and hallucination, challenging the objectivity of video as a documentary tool. Set during Mexico’s “lost decade” of economic crisis and neoliberal reform, the film critiques the failures of the so-called “Mexican Miracle” and its abandonment of working-class youth.
 
Minter’s collaborative process and punk aesthetics reject sanitized portrayals of marginalization. Instead, her protagonists are active agents in their own myth-making—complex, theatrical, and self-aware. The film’s title, Nobody is Innocent, asserts a refusal of victimhood or moral clarity, making it both a political statement and an artistic provocation. It remains a landmark in Latin American video art and experimental cinema.
 
Sabado de mierda (1986), co-directed by Sarah Minter and Gregorio Rocha, imagines a dystopian Neza in 2000 where punk and rocker gangs unite against police oppression. Blending fiction and political critique, the short film channels anarchic energy to envision rebellion—and destruction—as the only response to systemic violence and marginalization.