From a Caracas Street to El Helicoide
On April 11, 2002, Iván Simonovis was on duty as a senior security official overseeing the Caracas metropolitan police when one of Venezuela's most consequential political days erupted around him. Millions had taken to the streets opposing President Hugo Chávez; snipers opened fire on the crowd, leaving 19 people dead and dozens wounded. Chávez held power — then turned Venezuela's judicial apparatus against his perceived enemies.
Simonovis, already in the government's crosshairs, was cast as the primary scapegoat for that day's violence. In 2009, he was sentenced to 30 years in El Helicoide — an infamous Caracas structure that served simultaneously as a prison and the headquarters of Venezuela's secret intelligence police. He spent more than eight years there with nearly no access to natural light, an ordeal that left him with severe health deterioration. His son Iván Andrés was still a child the last time they shared the same room.
A Son Who Filmed Everything
Simonovis Pertiñez left Venezuela to pursue his education, ultimately earning a degree in Communication Sciences from the University of Marburg and a Masters in Film from the Free University of Berlin. He began building a body of short documentary work focused on political persecution and exile — but his most personal archive had been accumulating for decades: birthday recordings, vacation footage, and phone calls with a father speaking from a cell.
Legal and international pressure eventually moved Simonovis to house arrest, and his son was finally able to see him daily for the first time in years. The reunion became the film's emotional core. Simonovis Pertiñez documented his father relearning the ordinary rhythms of household life that years of incarceration had stripped away — all while security agents patrolled continuously outside. Armed officers arrived unannounced at one point and removed Simonovis without explanation; he was eventually returned home, at which point he made a life-altering decision — sending his family abroad and making his own clandestine escape from Venezuela.
"We Need to Set Things Straight"
Speaking about the film's purpose, the director framed it as an act of resistance against state-controlled narrative. "We are making films because we need to set things straight," he said, pointing to the way the Chávez and Maduro governments systematically rewrote the country's official history — renaming its founding symbols, altering its flag, replacing its currency, and even shifting its national time zone.
The film arrived on the international festival circuit carrying an Audience Award from the Gijón International Film Festival before Latino Public Broadcasting brought it to PBS for national distribution.
The Numbers That Make This Story National
The documentary's resonance inside the United States is grounded in a specific and sobering set of figures. One in 28 Latino children in the U.S. has an incarcerated parent, compared to 1 in 57 white children. A 2026 analysis of parental incarceration data found that Latino children face roughly twice the rate of parental jailing relative to white peers, and that affected families absorb an average annual income loss of $26,000 when a parent is removed from the household.
The pattern extends into adulthood: Latino adults are 70 percent more likely than white adults to be locked up for more than a year — stretching those household disruptions across entire developmental windows in ways that outlast any single criminal justice proceeding.
None of those figures require a Caracas backdrop to feel immediate. The childhood at the center of My Father's Prison — a phone pressed to the ear, a father's voice the only link across a wall — is not a uniquely Venezuelan experience.
What Latino Public Broadcasting Brings to the Premiere
Latino Public Broadcasting — co-founded by Edward James Olmos in 1998 and now operating for 28 years — has built its mission around placing precisely these stories on national public television. The organization has earned over 125 awards, including two George Foster Peabody Awards. Executive Producer Sandie Viquez Pedlow described the film as "a powerful portrait of a family torn apart by political repression" — and singled out its meditation on what imprisonment extracts from families emotionally over time, not merely financially or legally.
Why This PBS Slot Matters
The premiere places the film inside PBS's extended Hispanic Heritage Month programming alongside Finding Your Roots, Voces, and Pati Jinich Explores Panamericana — deliberately positioning Venezuelan exile and political memory within the same seasonal frame as genealogy, food, and cultural celebration. That curatorial choice pushes the representation of Latino identity on American public television past nostalgia and directly into the present tense.
My Father's Prison is Simonovis Pertiñez's first feature documentary. It premieres Tuesday, October 20, on the PBS App and PBS.org. Check local listings for broadcast times.
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