Maven's Nest
Reel Life: Flick Pix
Through one murder trial, Our Land (Nuestra Tierra) expansively examines centuries of colonialism, racism, greed, development, Indigenous identity and assimilation in northern Argentina.
By Nora Lee Mandel
OUR LAND (Nuestra Tierra)
Directed by Lucrecia Martel
Written by Maria Alché and Lucrecia Martel
Producers: Benjamin Domenech, Santiago Galelli, Matias Roveda, Joslyn Barnes, Julio Chavezmontes, and Javier Leoz
122 mins. Not Rated. In Spanish with English subtitles
Countries of Production: Argentina, U.S., Mexico, France, Netherlands, and Denmark
Opens in NYC at Film Forum & San Francisco May 1; Los Angeles May 8; in U.S. theaters through May and June via Strand Releasing
Through one murder trial, Our Land (Nuestra Tierra) expansively examines centuries of colonialism, racism, greed, development, Indigenous identity and assimilation through archival materials, photographs, memories, and fulsome drone views of the Chuchagasta community’s mountainous land in northwest Argentina’s Tucumán Province.
In 2009, the murderers of Javier Chocobar, the 68-year-old leader of the Chuchagasta community, brought a video camera to their planned eviction for a quarry. The insistent landowner, whose family had been sued for many years by the Chuchagasta, brought two ex-policemen and a revolver to the anticipated confrontation, which also seriously wounded two other members. Martel watched the video on YouTube, and it was re-played repeatedly when the men were finally tried in 2018. But her many cameras were also allowed in the courtroom (making the defendants uncomfortable), and in the years between she and a research team had been through archives and spent extensive time with the community members for their point of view. Martel grew up in the north of Argentina, and realized that over half that population has Indigenous heritage, even as the schools celebrated Columbus for bringing Spanish colonization – October 12 was also the date of the murder.
How could a then-illiterate community prove its ownership, let alone existence, to a government that defined property only by written documentation? Even as an historian admits he quoted an 1807 newspaper article that Indigenous people “no longer existed” just for flare, the alleged owner sought to prove his family’s claim with decades of rent receipts from when they forced the community members into unfair sharecropper arrangements on the land where they had herded livestock for generations. The community does have documentation of their years since of trying to challenge the establishment in municipal and provincial offices and courts, to no avail. Even national laws that are passed to ostensibly help Indigenous people get changed by succeeding legislatures when they try to implement them.
The community elders have their own archives of photographs to trigger memories. Most were sent back from Buenos Aires when family members felt driven from their homes, with the only second grade education that was available, to find work in factories and housekeeping. One elderly woman sentimentally traces her family tree through the images as she fondly recalls the relationships of siblings, courtships, marriages, children, and holiday gatherings. She and the other elders mourn the loss of their language, culture, and traditional crafts skills. They feel strongly that the land is essential to their identity and for younger generations.
Martel explored the roots of colonialism in her fable-like Zama (2017). She notes that in her fiction films the dead rise when she calls “Cut!”. But the action in her first feature documentary is real. Opening here with the view of the land from space, much as Patricio Guzmán has explored Chile, she focuses on Javier Chocobar as instrumental in organizing the Chuchagasta against history. She is just as passionately determined as the legacy of his resolute community to see justice achieved for his murder and his goals.
April 26, 2026
Nora Lee Mandel is a member of New York Film Critics Online. Her reviews are counted in the Rotten Tomatoes TomatoMeter:
Complete Index to Nora Lee Mandel's Movie Reviews
My reviews have appeared on: FF2 Media; Film-Forward; Lilith, FilmFestivalTraveler; and, Alliance of Women Film Journalists and for Jewish film festivals. Shorter versions of my older reviews are at IMDb's comments, where non-English-language films are listed by their native titles.
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