Full Breakdown
Lucrecia Martel’s *Our Land*: A Documentary on the 2009 Killing of Indigenous Activist Javier Chocobar
5/5/2026, 12:06:41 PM
The Core Event – Killing, Legal Battle, and Film Premiere
In 2009 police and landowners shot Indigenous activist Javier Chocobar while attempting to evict the Chuschagasta community from ancestral territory in northern Argentina. The incident sparked a series of hearings that stretched across multiple government offices. Martel’s documentary, *Our Land* (originally titled *Landmarks*), opened the 2025 Venice Film Festival and later screened at the 2025 New York Film Festival and the Roxie Theater in San Francisco.
Historical Context – Colonial Legacies and Bureaucratic Dispossession
Martel links the 2009 killing to a colonial framework that began with the Spanish Requerimiento, a declaration that justified conquest by claiming divine ownership of the land. She notes that Argentine officials often assert “This space is empty. I want that space because no one is there,” a narrative that legitimizes eviction and erasure. The film argues that bureaucracy functions as a tool that extracts time from Indigenous peoples, forcing them to navigate endless queues and paperwork.
Key Figures & Groups
- Lucrecia Martel – Argentine filmmaker, director of *Our Land*.
- Javier Chocobar – Indigenous activist whose death anchors the documentary.
- Chuschagasta community – Indigenous group contesting land theft.
- Landowners and Argentine state agencies – Parties involved in the eviction and legal processes.
Narrative Structure and Formal Devices
*Our Land* weaves courtroom footage, archival photographs, cell-phone video, and reenactments. Its most distinctive formal element is sustained drone cinematography, which provides a detached aerial perspective that the director uses to foreground the land’s pre-human existence. A mid-film incident in which a bird collides with the drone, causing the camera to spin, is retained as a visual metaphor for “false presumptions of emptiness” meeting corrective truth.
Data & Statistics – Timeline of Legal Proceedings
- 2009 – Killing of Javier Chocobar.
- 2009-2024 – Series of hearings across at least five Argentine government offices; repeated trips between buildings documented in the film.
- 2025 – World premiere at Venice; subsequent festival screenings.
Why It Matters – Implications for Indigenous Rights
The documentary highlights how legal inertia and colonial rhetoric sustain land dispossession. By exposing the temporal cost imposed on Indigenous claimants, the film contributes to broader debates on decolonizing property law and confronting state-sanctioned erasure.
Official Statements & Responses
Martel has described bureaucracy as “a weapon of the slow, ongoing, and entirely sanctioned murder of Indigenous life.” She emphasizes that the film’s drone imagery “reminds us that this land existed before we existed,” positioning the visual approach as an ethical stance rather than a neutral observation. Festival organizers have presented the work as “a sharp and eloquent address of land theft, Indigenous erasure, and the troubling effects of colonialism in Latin America.”
Criticism & Opposition – State Narrative of Empty Land
The film records the prevailing justification used by authorities: “This space is empty. I want that space because no one is there.” This claim underpins the legal strategy to evict the Chuschagasta community and reflects a broader pattern of denying Indigenous presence.
On-the-Ground Reports – Community Voices
A community member is heard stating, “Everyone who wants a piece of land says that the Indigenous people have disappeared,” illustrating the lived impact of the empty-land narrative.
Verbatim Quotes
- “everyone who wants a piece of land says that the Indigenous people have disappeared” — Chuschagasta community member
- “In an interview with programmers James Lattimer and Eva Sangiorgi, conducted shortly before the documentary’s premiere at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, she described it not as any kind of left turn in her oeuvre, but as a consolidation of themes she has long pursued: “I think that many of the things that were already present in my fictions converge in this documentary—the figure of an ‘other,’ almost like a ghost.” — Lucrecia Martel
- “The drone shots remind us that this land existed before we existed.” — Lucrecia Martel
- “I had to wonder: how is it possible for a person who comes from a mother, from a father, who has relatives, who has been living in a human context—how can they be able to cut and torture and kill children who are screaming?” — Lucrecia Martel
- “Our Land makes manifest, unearths, that which in Martel’s fictions had hovered at the threshold of perception.” — Film reviewer
What’s Next – Ongoing Screenings and Discussions
Following its Venice debut, *Our Land* will continue to circulate through North American festivals, university panels, and community events, fostering dialogue on Indigenous land rights and the legacy of colonial legal frameworks.