Nuestra Tierra Landmarks

From acclaimed Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel, known for her poetic and dreamy class-conscious dramas (La Cienaga, The Holy Girl, The Headless Woman) comes a very different, but no less compelling, portrait of inequality. Martel chronicles the trial of three men who entered the Indigenous community of Chuschagasta in northern Argentina to take ownership of the land and then killed the community’s leader, Javier Chocobar. Drawing on vivid archival video of the incident, caught on cellphone cameras, Martel closely follows the story of the crime, its punishment, and its far-reaching consequences.

Part courtroom drama and part lyrical look at the past, present, and future of the Chuschagasta people, Nuestra Tierra provides a broader context for the murderous act and offers a space for members of the community to reclaim their lives from a government that has long tried to deny not only their rights to the land but even their very existence. With a keen eye for symbolic details and for the tensions between tradition and modernity, nature and technology, Martel also tells a larger tale about the perennial struggles and injustices embedded in contemporary society.