Screen/Society--"Our Land"/"Nuestra tierra" (Lucrecia Martel, 2025) | NCLAFF

The NC Latin American Film Festival and Screen/Society present:

"Our Land" / "Nuestra tierra" (aka "Landmarks") (Lucrecia Martel, 2025, 122 min, Argentina, Spanish with English subtitles, DCP)

In October 2009, Javier Chocobar, a member of the indigenous Chuchagasta community in northwest Argentina's Tucumán Province, tried to defend himself and his people from being forcibly evicted from their land by a local landowner and two former police officers. As a result, the 68-year-old Chocobar was shot and killed, and two other community members were wounded. The murder is caught on video. It takes nine years of protests before court proceedings are finally opened in 2018. During all this time, the killers remain free.

In her expansive and enlightening first feature documentary, acclaimed Argentinean filmmaker Lucrecia Martel (ZAMA, THE HEADLESS WOMAN) takes a sweeping approach to this tragic true story, triangulating the murder trial of the three men, the lives of Chocobar and his fellow Chuchagasta people, and the centuries-old, colonialist legacy of land and property theft across Latin America. With a ravishing, at times vertiginous visual approach to filming the natural beauty of the contested land, Martel pays cinematic tribute to people whom others systematically tried to erase from history.

"A slow-burning, increasingly incensed unraveling of a horrific murder case underpinned by colonialist privilege and prejudice... with steadily rising emotional impact and a long view of Latin American history that transcends any true-crime trappings." -- Guy Lodge, Variety 

"Martel strips Argentina's mythmaking down to its colonial foundations ... It's about preserving the history of Argentina, told by those who were conquered, and supporting the ongoing struggle for indigenous survival. Martel's filmmaking here is intentionally straightforward and precise, wielding careful storytelling as a cudgel against the bludgeoning power of the state, in order to credibly represent and affirm the existence of a history and culture that has been 'officially' denied." -- A.G. Sims, Reverse Shot

"A searing and detailed chronicle of murder, bigotry and robbery on a massive scale... It's also filled with flashes of visual splendor, as the camera rises to a bird's eye view to reveal the scope of the land in question, reminding us that what's at stake is not only an entire people's culture, but nature itself." -- Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter