Our Land (Nuestra Tierra) [2025]

 The rotten history of settler-colonialism in Argentina – and the accompanying erasure of indigenous communities – has undergone progressive explorations in Lucrecia Martel’s blazing filmography. Ethnic populace – and their treatment by white bourgeois Argentines – manifested on the fringes of La Ciénaga, became a narrative catalyst in The Headless Woman, and provided the backdrop in Zama. And now, in her incisive and magnificent feature-length documentary Our Land (which was initially conceived as a hybrid essay), they’ve now moved into the foreground. Based on the 2009 murder of Javier Chocobar, 68-year-old leader of the Chuschagasta community and land rights’ activist in the country’s Tucumán Province, while resisting eviction by three men who claimed ownership of the place where they’ve existed for generations, and the much-belated trial of that in 2018, Martel trained her gaze for a rich portrayal of both the community and the deceased individual alongside a cutting reportage on the crime and the trial. The film, consequently, operated along multiple intersecting strands, coalescing murky historical contexts with contemporary fault-lines, and collective with the personal. Alongside, it navigated through “real time” legal proceedings; investigations into the incident from 9 years back; profoundly affecting memories of Chocobar through his widowed wife; seething examination of exploitation, otherization, power imbalances and persisting colonialist tendencies; and a kaleidoscopic testament to the Chuschagasta peoples’ resistance and resilience through a blend of oral and archival histories. Co-written with María Alché, her mischievous heroine from The Holy Girl, Martel stitched this multilayered tapestry through disparate visual choices – static images and jerky handycams juxtaposed with ravishing panoramic and drone shots – and reminded me of Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light by prefacing the grimy incident with majestic images from space.

Director: Lucrecia Martel

Genre: Documentary/Essay Film/Political History

Language: Spanish

Country: Argentina