The first feature-length documentary from acclaimed Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel, Nuestra Tierra (Our Land) uses the death of an indigenous leader to take a cold, hard look at the racist foundations on which her country has been built. 

In her director’s statement, Martel proclaimed, “This film works with our mother tongue and its racist complexities, which prevent many from accessing a vital space. The language of documents. The lives of people expelled by papers of dubious value, lives lost in hours of useless procedures. A historical document is the script of a scene that never existed, but that suits those who sign it. Here, cinema can be useful.”

Martel uses innovative cinematic techniques, including a reclamation and incisive subversion of both drone footage, to not just tell the story of the 2009 murder of Javier Chocobar and the subsequent trial of those who perpetrated it,, but also to explore the systematic – and bureaucratic – erasure of the indigenous Chuschagasta community from the country’s history. Infusing her film with the personal photographic archives and oral histories of the community, Martel transmogrifies its true crime trappings into an urgent and essential anti-colonial text. 

Nuestra Tierra (Our Land) had its world premiere at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, and screened at the BFI London Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival.