The Cortez Public Library and Sunflower Theatre will be showing the 2016 Academy Award nominated documentary film “Cartel Land,” on Monday, March 14.
“Cartel Land” is a riveting, on the-ground look at the journeys of two modern-day vigilante groups and their shared enemy – the murderous Mexican drug cartels. In the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as “El Doctor,” leads the Autodefensas, a citizen uprising against the violent Knights Templar drug cartel, which has wreaked havoc on the region for years. Meanwhile, in Arizona’s Altar Valley – a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley – Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to stop Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across our border.
Matthew Heineman is an Oscar-nominated and Emmy-nominated filmmaker based in New York. “Cartel Land’” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where Heineman won the Best Director Award and Special Jury Prize for Cinematography.
It was recently nominated for a Gotham Award, Critics’ Choice Award, and BAFTA Award for Best Documentary. Heineman won the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary Award from the Director’s Guild of America for the film, as well as the Courage Under Fire Award from the International Documentary Association “in recognition of conspicuous bravery in the pursuit of truth.” He was also named one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2015.
“The director Matthew Heineman has a terrific eye ... and nerves of steel,” the New York Times said in a review. “Serving as the primary cinematographer, he employs a run-and-gun style for much of the movie, using a lightweight digital camera that at times lurches so dramatically that you can visualize the body attached to it.”
Showtime is 7 p.m., and doors open at 6:15 p.m. Admission is a suggested donation of $5.
The film is part of a documentary series partnership between the Cortez Public Library and the Sunflower Theatre.