Venezuela was once the richest country in Latin America, with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and this full documentary shows how it became a state of disaster. The film traces the collapse under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro: the nationalisation of industry, the corruption and mismanagement of the state oil company, the price controls and currency policies that destroyed production, and the political repression that silenced opposition. The result was hyperinflation, empty shops and hospitals, and a humanitarian crisis that drove millions of Venezuelans to flee.
The documentary looks at everyday life in the crisis, with families struggling to find food and medicine, hospitals without supplies, and children going hungry in a country that should be wealthy. It also examines the international response, the sanctions, the political standoff between Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaidó, and the debate over whether Venezuela’s disaster was the fault of socialism itself or of corrupt leadership.
This film matters because Venezuela became the most powerful recent example in the debate over socialism, and because its people continue to pay the price. It is a sobering account of how a prosperous democracy can fall apart, and of the human suffering that follows when an economy and a political system collapse together.