Exec Producer: Sarah Waldron

Editor: Robyn Wright Eps 1 and 2

BBC Two

Thursday 7th December

Robyn Wright started editing this two-part edition of the award-winning This World strand back in May. It looks back at the unsolved disappearance of 43 Mexican students in the infamous Iguala mass kidnapping incident in 2014.

On the evening of 26 September 2014, 43 students were attacked on their way to a protest in Mexico City. They were forced off passenger buses, never to be seen again. The young trainee teachers’ disappearance and the botched investigation which followed triggered protests and outrage in Mexico and abroad.

This documentary hears how federal investigators initially blamed corrupt local police and a local drug cartel for the attacks, but in the weeks and months that followed, civil unrest grew as the parents of the missing boys became increasingly suspicious of the official investigation.

Featuring survivors, families of the missing and exclusive interviews with Tomás Zerón De Lucio, the fugitive former head of the Mexican Criminal Investigation Agency (CIA) and Omar Gómez Trejo, the exiled former special prosecutor.

We spoke with Robyn about the challenges of the edit. She said that “It was a fantastic story to work on and something I feel proud to be a part of.  The biggest challenge was to be working on something where 75% of the characters were Spanish speakers and I don’t speak Spanish.  Also creating a structure that was based on a drama thriller genre for a story that was factual and stretched over nine years.  Keeping it suspenseful and dramatic, was also quite challenging.  And of course, schedules!”.

Part one of Disappeared: Mexico’s Missing 43 will be on Thursday 7th December 9pm on BBC Two.