Nicolás Maduro has ruled Venezuela since Hugo Chávez's death in 2013, inheriting a socialist revolution and a country sitting on the world's largest oil reserves. This DW report traces how a former bus driver became an authoritarian president who survives coup attempts, a 2017 parliamentary bid to remove him, mass street protests, and international condemnation. Interviews and on-the-ground footage document the human cost: hyperinflation, widespread poverty, and millions of Venezuelans fleeing to neighboring countries. The film revisits the contested 2024 presidential election, which Maduro claimed despite opposition disputes, and the renewed protests that followed. It also places Venezuela's crisis in a shifting geopolitical frame, showing how Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting split with North America and Europe have made the world hungrier for oil, potentially giving Maduro's government new leverage. Corruption and mismanagement inside the state elite come under scrutiny throughout, alongside the question of why, despite years of failure and unrest, Maduro's grip on power has not loosened.