Exploring the struggle against the drug cartels
Doc looks at citizen-led militia groups at work in both Arizona and Mexico
At the Cannes Film Festival this year, Denis Villeneuve premièred Sicario (opening in Canada this October), a thrilling drama about the violence and moral ambiguity surrounding Mexican cartels and their cross-border drug trade. Director Matthew Heineman gives us the real deal with Cartel Land, a documentary so on-the-ground it features footage of the film crew scrambling for safety during a shootout.
Heineman splits his time between Arizona, where a heavily armed citizens’ militia patrols the border for traffickers, and Mexico’s Michoacán state, 1,500 kilometres to the south, where a similar organization called the autodefensas tries to run the Knights Templar Cartel out of one town after another.
Each group features a grizzled leader with a fascinating backstory, and each has the thankless task of fighting a publicrelations campaign while waging what amounts to an actual war against a well-armed, intractable opponent. Especially interesting is autodefensas leader José Manuel Mireles, a grandfather who splits his time between a medical practice and his paramilitary duties.
The film doesn’t shy away from shadows or controversy: many of the Arizonans are motivated by nothing more than xenophobia and anti-immigrant zeal, while the Mexican vigilantes are accused of looting and pillaging after taking down cartel members.
“We can’t become the criminals we’re fighting against,” says Mireles, but crime, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
Cartel Land, whose producers include Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow, has picked up numerous festival prizes, including a directing award at Sundance last January. It’s a brilliantly exposed snapshot of a hugely complicated situation.