Known for her visually and aurally, densely layered films, taking on Argentina's society of haves and have nots, esteemed filmmaker Lucrecia Martel's foray into the documentary form culminates in Our Land.
It's a long-gestating project that originated in 2011, when Martel started reading the materials surrounding the murder of Javier Chocobar, a leader of Chuschagasta indigenous community in Argentina's Tucumán Province.
Combing through old archives, old video footage, testimonies, interviews and oral history, and aided by new technology, Martel creates another complex and nuanced continuation of her investigation into the country's colonial history and injustices perpetrated on its indigenous population, mirroring in spirit her epic masterpiece Zama, which came out eight years ago.
Our Land starts with a satellite image of Earth, then we zoom in to the topography of Argentina's northwest region, revealing lush forest, then to young girls playing soccer on a field, as a drone camera glides over the landscape. Uncharistically, Martel seems to be incorporating technology into her documentary, in stark contrast with her subjects -- the people who worked the land for generations -- and their adversaries -- the founding fathers of Argentina, the colonizers who exploited the natives and began stealing land, dating back to the 15th century. The dissonance of her bird's eye view/Big-Brother's-watching-you method, and the rugged landscape and its inhabitants, is the point of Our Land.
Case in point: Martel leaves in footage of a drone getting hit by a bird in mid-air. As jarring and humorous as it looks, she is not interested in perfect, gliding shots of drone footage over nature, like some David Attenborough-style nature documentary. She is using the technology to make a point.
In 2009, the defendants, landowner Dario Luis Amin and two friends, former police officers, entered into the territory, armed with guns, to intimidate and forcefully evict the Chuschagasta community. Theibest evidence of their innocence (in their minds) is their own videotaping of the confrontation and murder. The shaky video tape is played over and over again throughout the film.
In 2018, as the trial finally takes place nine years after the murder, the defendants' thin justification was that they were threatened and outnumbered. On paper, Amin, a former government official, is the land owner and, according to government records, indigenous people in that region went extinct in the 1800s.
Martel provides a wealth of interviews and ephemera: photographs, family histories and artifacts, as well as years of court documents from the legal battles the community waged for decades, long before Chocobar's death. It's also in the faces of the region's inhabitants, which are distinctly different from Argentina's general population with mainly their European ancestry. Antonia Hortensia Mamani, the widow of Chocobar, displays hundreds of old fading photographs, many taken by her late husband who was an analog photography enthusiast, and laments the legacy of their history being lost.
As the trial goes on, it becomes clear that what we are witnessing are two competing narratives. One is the Argentine state's account and the other is the account of the people. At one point, the defendants explain in their own words why they shoved the approaching Chocobar -- "the Argentine State taught us to do that" -- effectively making the government the defendant as a whole.
Our Land's story resonates because we see it happening everywhere in the world now, from Gaza to Lebanon to Ukraine to a local level; here in New York, it's deed theft, coaxing longtime Black and brown residents out of their homes, by greedy landowners and corporations, aided by NYPD.
The arrogance displayed in Amin's video becomes the defendants' downfall. Technology can be a double-edged sword. The recordings are there for everyone to see and judge. But with deepfakes and A.I., the future of truth is unknown. Amin's 22-year sentence was appealed and he served only two years in jail, only to die of Covid. Two other dependants' 15-year sentences were appealed but then upheld later.
As with her narrative films, which show the satiric lives of the Argentine upper-class and the state's ugly colonial history, Martel shines a light on the daily struggles of her country's indigenous population with Our Land. The film is a meticulously researched, and tactfully shot and presented, comfortably fitting into her impressive filmography.
Our Land opens in New York and San Fransisco May 1, followed by Los Angeles May 8, with a national rollout to follow. The Headless Woman 4K restoration opens at Metrograph in NYC on May 8. Visit Strand Releasing for more information.
Dustin Chang is a freelance writer. His musings and opinions on everything cinema and beyond can be found at www.dustinchang.com