\n\tIn the context of her home country of Argentina, which saw the Indigenous population wiped out or displaced through colonization by Spain and successive waves of European immigration, the question of \u201cwe\u201d becomes particularly acute.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIs it the white ones, children of immigrants?\u201d Martel asked during a Q&A at CIFF. \u201cIs it the Indigenous community? \u2026We have made a great effort to keep them out of history. What does this word [\u2018we\u2019] mean? Argentine history, to whom does it belong?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe documentary centers on the Indigenous Chuschagasta community of the north of Argentina, who have been systematically dispossessed of their land \u2013 hence the title Nuestra Tierra, \u201cour land\u201d \u2013 and often forced into the position of renting various hectares from the descendants of European colonists. The very existence of the Chuschagasta is disputed by some with power in Argentina who make the vague claim that they \u201cdisappeared\u201d sometime in the 19th century.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 2009 three armed white men entered the Chuschagasta\u2019s lands asserting legal title to the area. After tribal leader Javier Chocobar raised a still camera to record what the men were doing, one of them shot him dead.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThis crime was plainly captured on video, yet it took nine years of protests before the culprits were brought to trial, where they claimed no wrongdoing,\u201d the TIFF program writes. \u201cNuestra Tierra alternates between monitoring the tense legal proceedings, allowing Chuschagasta community members to share their stories through interviews and archival materials, and offering breathtaking explorations of this beautiful land that is being reduced to property, and whose ownership is being contested.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHaving to go through the court system to seek justice \u2013 be it for the killing of Chocobar or to assert control of their own land \u2013 already puts the Chuschagasta at a disadvantage. The courts \u2013 and their reliance upon \u201cdocuments\u201d that can be falsified or manipulated to suit the interests of the powerful \u2013 were never designed to serve the needs of the Indigenous. In the film, the Chuschagasta dutifully try to follow all the court\u2019s procedures \u2013 los tr\u00e1mites, in Spanish \u2013 yet they\u2019re constantly entangled in bureaucracy.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cOne can end their life without having known love, perhaps even infidelity, but it\u2019s very difficult for any of us anywhere on the planet to end our lives without having had to do a tr\u00e1mite (bureaucratic step or procedure),\u201d Martel observed mordantly. \u201cAnd the tr\u00e1mite (procedure) is where communities and all the people who are disregarded by any country\u2019s system waste their lives, their time. They spend endless hours waiting to fill out paperwork to get a signature that will recognize something so they can continue a process. And a tr\u00e1mite is the way a country tortures people [who are] the most vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Lucrecia](\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-deadline-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tLucrecia Martel (with cane) at the opening night of the Camden International Film Festival. Holding mic (in silver jacket) is producer Joslyn Barnes.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthew Carey<\/p>\n
\n\tAt the Q&A, Martel was asked a question by a festival programmer that she interpreted as raising a doubt as to whether she, as a non-Indigenous person, had the right to tell a story about the Indigenous.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a problem that all of us in the film industry have, which is that now there\u2019s this thing about who has the right to speak,\u201d Martel replied. \u201cSo, women have to talk about women, men about men, Black people about Black people, Indians about Indians. We can\u2019t live on a planet like this. We need to share, and it\u2019s very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tShe added, \u201cWhen I made this film, I was really afraid of not interpreting well or editing whatever the community had said, but I prefer to pay the price of horror if I\u2019m wrong than not make a film that I feel is important to me, to understand myself at least a little bit within Argentina. We can\u2019t continue with that fear of, \u2018Oh no, I can\u2019t make a film about [thus and such].\u2019 We can\u2019t have that limitation because culture is also about making mistakes in the intention to communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tDirector Lucrecia Martel attends the \u2018Nuestra Tierra (Landmarks)\u2019 photocall at the Venice Film Festival on August 31, 2025.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAldara Zarraoa\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\n\tNext month, Nuestra Tierra will screen at the Vancouver International Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and the BFI London Film Festival, and the Chicago International Film Festival. The documentary culminates with a verdict in the murder case, and a note about the fate of the defendants. What remains very uncertain is what will happen to the Chuschagasta, their land, and their place within Argentina.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe idea of \u200b\u200bthis film was, of course, to collaborate with that community, the Chuschagasta community, which has been fighting for its territory for a long time,\u201d Martel commented, \u201cbut it was also about trying to understand ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When we speak of \u201cwe\u201d as a society, who is being referred to? Who is being left out?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14346,146,85,46,9103,26958,26959,2623],"class_list":["post-31789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-camden-international-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-landmarks","tag-lucrecia-martel","tag-nuestra-tierra","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}