Cocalero

Set during the run-up to the 2005 election of onetime coca farmer Evo Morales as Bolivia’s first indigenous president, this sympathetic documentary follows the candidate and other members of his socialist MAS party as they prepare for the vote. Shot vérité-style and eschewing narration, Cocalero largely forgoes overt political editorializing, a few jabs at the devastation wreaked by the U.S.-backed war on drugs notwithstanding. At its core, this is a film about poor people getting their first taste of political power; its most memorable scene is of a roomful of illiterate farmers learning how to fill out a ballot.