Our Land · reception & legacy
2026 · Lucrecia Martel
How Our Land has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
It arrived at Venice 2025 as the event of the fall — Martel's first feature in eight years, since Zama — and went from an out-of-competition slot to winning Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival and a special award from the National Society of Film Critics.
What's debated
The split is over Martel's refusal to make a conventional true-crime doc: is the film's elliptical, 'scattered' structure the whole point, or does it blunt the case it's building?
Where it stands
An instant pilgrimage object for the Martel faithful — the long-awaited 'new Martel' that doubles as her first documentary, already climbing year-end and Letterboxd best-of lists.
★ Did you know? Martel worked on the film for roughly 14 years under the working title 'Chocobar' — she has said it developed in parallel with Zama, and that making it helped her understand things in that film.