The Settlers

Tierra del Fuego, 1901. The wealthy landowner José Menéndez hires three men to clear a route from his holdings to the Atlantic: a British officer, an American mercenary and a mixed-race Chilean marksman. What they are permitted to do to the Selk'nam along the way is stated plainly, and the result is slaughter. In his first feature Felipe Gálvez tells that genocide in the language of the western while refusing to manufacture heroism; violence here is not frontier colour but the method by which property is established. A final section jumps years forward to show how the state tidied the episode away. Alfredo Castro plays Menéndez. It won the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes. Who it is for: viewers interested in colonial history and westerns that invert the genre. Who it is not for: anyone who needs distance from severe violence and scenes of rape.