Photo credit: Neil Harvey

In San Salvador, El Salvador, two thousand miles from Los Angeles’s 18th Street, a gang known as “18” governs its territory like an armed militia. In the mid 1990s, thousands of Salvadoran nationals living illegally in the U.S. were deported to their homeland. Some brought L.A. gang culture back with them to a country beset by poverty and awash in arms. Organizing support for gang members in need, meting out justice to those who would defy the gang’s code and waging an endless vendetta against its enemies, 18 is helping to make El Salvador one of the most violent and crime-ridden countries in the world. “18 with a Bullet” presents a chilling portrait of six months in the life of this notorious Central American gang.

Photo credit: Neil Harvey

Producer/Director Ricardo Pollack has been making documentaries for the BBC and CHANNEL 4 for a decade. These include SURVEILLANCE, about the FBI campaign against communists in the 1950s; SHOOT OUT, about an anarchist rebellion in France in the 1990s; and THE SPYING GAME, on America’s cold war involvement in Afghanistan. Recently, he has produced and directed several feature length documentaries for the BBC, including ACCUSED, about a satanic abuse scare in the Orkney Islands of Scotland and 55 DAYS: THE FALL OF SAIGON, about the final days of America’s presence in Vietnam. He is currently working on another feature length film, also for the BBC, about the partition of India.