A key chronicler of South American colonization and its fetid aftermath (La Cienaga, The Headless Woman), Argentine director Lucrecia Martel explores that ongoing history in documentary form with Our Land (Nuestra Tierra), which revisits the 2009 killing of indigenous leader Javier Chocobar. Chocobar was shot by armed men who had entered the community’s ancestral land, claiming they legally owned it. The movie centers on the ensuing court case indicting the killers, which took place in 2018 after years of protest. Martel employs body-camera documentation of the event; courtroom footage (including the bizarre practice of “confrontation,” in which plaintiffs and defendants directly debate each other); and on-camera testimonies and archival photos, by which we learn the varied personal histories of indigenous community members. It’s a sober, level-headed approach for a director whose features are soaked in thick mood and dark humor. Martel’s directorial touch can be felt, however, in her pointed use of drone cameras. Overused in nature and travel documentaries, the drone footage here goes beyond easy aerial awe, instead serving as clever commentary. The vantage points at once locate and complicate the “lines” humans draw upon the earth, perhaps most pointedly in a climactic drone shot that is turned upside down. In its own way, Our Land (Nuestra Tierra) upends Argentina’s prevailing understanding of “ownership.”
(9/16/2026)
