THE KIDNAPPING OF INGRID BETANCOURT
Documentary • 76 minutes
The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt is the story of a Colombian presidential candidate held hostage by leftist guerrillas and her family's desperate quest to free her and keep her campaign alive.
On May 26, 2002, we watched the Colombian presidential elections from Bogotá’s regal Plaza de Bolivar. We had come to Colombia to document the campaign of controversial presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt. But on Election Day, Ingrid never arrived. Instead, the candidate appeared in the Plaza as a cardboard torso—carried in the arms of her husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte. As Juan Carlos and Ingrid’s mother, Yolanda Pulecio, pleaded with the Colombian people for solidarity, Ingrid spent Election Day deep in the Colombian jungle—a hostage of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and one of the thousands of victims of Colombia’s 40 year-old civil war.
In The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt, Ingrid Betancourt tells her own life story including how, since the beginning of her congressional election in 1994, she risked her life by denouncing Colombian politicians who have been linked to drug cartels. The film continues after the day she is kidnapped on February 23, 2002, and documents her family and her political party, thrown into upheaval, as they struggle to free her and to keep her presidential campaign alive.
