Christian Poveda, the director of the documentary La vida loca already had a long career in photo-journalism behind him before he embarked on his film which portrays the tough violent world of the members of the Mara La 18 gang in the district of La Campanera in Soyapango in El Salvador, although the main character in his own words is actually death itself. These gang members were all from gangs formed in Los Angeles from Salvadoreans who were refugees from the civil wars of the 1980s. These gangs reformed after they returned to El Salvador after the war was over in 1992, and even began to be joined by orphans or children abandoned after the war who had been rejected by society and who now found a new family.