Taking us into the eye of a storm of vigilante warfare, Matthew Heineman’s Cartel Land is a thrilling, layered documentary steeped in danger and serpentine street politics. Warring factions in the Mexican state of Michuacán have taken the lives of innocents and filled the streets with unlicensed armaments in their crossfire: drug cartels like the Knights Templar have terrorized the people for years, while the white T-shirt-wearing Autodefensas, led by Dr. Jose Mireles, have fought to protect the civilians, though their methods are as illegal as their drug-trafficking opposition.

Heineman and his small crew dive straight into the street wars of Mexico as well as take a look at the life of Tim Foley, an American leading a group called Arizona Border Recon, who’ve devoted their lives to protecting U.S. borders from the drugs and bloodshed ravaging Mexico. It’s an intimate portrait that explores the politics motivations of all parties, even those in the cartel. The film is packed with jaw-dropping revelations that reveal the true nature of the conflict raging just beyond our borders.

I spoke to Matthew about his experience making Cartel Land, which is out in limited release now.

Have audiences’ reaction to the film been what you anticipated, or were you surprised?
I generally don’t try to spend too much time anticipating exactly how an audience is going to react. I tried to make a film that moved me. Hopefully people latch onto it. I’m really grateful for the response we’ve gotten.

The movie really makes your mind move a mile a minute. Lots of stuff to ponder, lots of questions to consider.
One of the things I wanted to do was let the story tell itself, especially on the Mexican side. I originally thought I was telling this very simple hero/villain story. Guys in white shirts fighting against guys in black shirts. Slowly, over time, I realized the line between good and evil is much more blurry. The story evolved in a way I never could have imagined or predicted. I’m not a war reporter. I’ve never been in situations like this before. I could never have imagined I’d be in shootouts between vigilantes and the cartel.

Is the way the story plays out in the film the way you experienced it?
Yeah, totally. That was one of my goals in editing the film, to allow the audience to go on the same journey I went on. All those moments when I felt the rug was pulled out from under me; all those moments when I thought I understood what was happening, but things changed. I wanted the audience to go through those same emotions, go on that same roller coaster.

How long did it take to shoot?
About a year. We first started filming in Arizona, and after about four or five months, my father actually sent me an article about the Autodefensas, having no idea I’d actually follow through on it. Right when I read it, I knew I wanted to create this parallel narrative about vigilanteism on both sides of the border. Two weeks later, I was filming in Mexico. I spent about nine months in Mexico, on and off. About one or two weeks in Mexico every month.

The subjects in your film are larger than life. Do you think living a life under threat of death breeds richer personalities?
I don’t know. I didn’t want to make a simplistic film. I didn’t want to make a film with an agenda. I really wanted to let the story dictate where I would go. I didn’t want to put nice, neat boxes around the characters or the movements. I wanted to be comfortable in exploring these murky, murky waters we were filming in. There were many times, especially near the end of the film, when I’d be on a mission in the back of a truck, I truly didn’t know if they were the good guys or the bad guys. That was a scary, scary thing.

Did that mess with your head?
Yeah. It was unlike anything I’d ever done before. It definitely had a personal impact on me. It solidified in my mind how I view life and how I want to live my life. Have an open mind. I’ve been criticized for not having a stronger point of view. But in my opinion, the film does have a very strong point of view. Just because I don’t have talking heads or experts or stats putting things into context for people doesn’t mean the film doesn’t have a powerful voice. Making the film reinforced my desire to look at things with an open mind. A mentor of mine in the film world said, “If you end up with the story you started with, you weren’t listening along the way.” I listened every day as I went through this complicated moral quagmire of a journey.

Unlike a lot of other docs that might cover this material, I think your movie conveys what the situation in Mexico and on the border feels like rather than what it looks like on paper.
My goal was to take this issue out of the headlines. It’s glorified by TV shows and in headlines, and I wanted to get beyond that and put my camera right in the middle of the action. Put myself right in the middle of the action. That’s what I tried to do, not from the outside, but from the middle of it.

What was the vision for the aesthetics of the film?
Aesthetics were really important to me. I wanted to mask the intensity of what we were seeing with the way we shot it. It was very important.

I’ve been enjoying this influx of documentaries that are very cinematic and utilize visual storytelling as opposed to talking heads. It’s a great time for docs.
Yeah, it’s an incredibly exciting time to be making documentary films. The technology has been democratized by cheaper cameras and cheaper ways of making film. The outlets have expanded: there are more and more places to show your film. That’s really, really exciting. I think documentary films generate powerful conversations and show people a world they’ve never seen before. I feel incredibly grateful and honored that I can do this for a living and tell stories.

You put yourself in a lot of danger for this movie. What drives you as a filmmaker?
What an amazing thing to be able to spend time with people and have them open up their lives to me. To travel around the world and tell people stories. It’s a privilege, it’s an honor and something I take very seriously. I fell in love with Mexico and the people of Michoacán, and I felt a great duty and obligation to tell this complicated story. I’m really glad with how it turned out.

For years, the violence and aggression of Mexican drug cartels have made headlines across America, and by the looks of it this violence has grown progressively worse as more cartels sprout up, clash for territory, and vie for power. Still, few films have spotlighted this conflict as a subject, and while TV has crossed paths with the topic, it’s usually never more than in passing. This year sees several films looking south toward the border, including Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Sicario and the powerful new documentary Cartel Land.

Cartel Land opens around a smoke-filled barrel, with a group of Mexican meth cookers carefully mixing a large batch of the product. And while it’s hard not to be terrified by their ease and comfort crafting such a toxic substance, a voice over explains that these men have to work here to support their families and stay on the good side of the cartels. They are simply trying to survive, and this stark, gorgeously shot scene sets the tone for what follows. Cartel Land chronicles the near-parallel lives of two men, one Mexican and one American, who pick up arms against the cartels, fighting a war that they believe their governments have forgotten, only to be vilified by the people they are laying down their lives to defend.

In the Mexican state of Michoacan, “El Doctor” Jose Mireles begins a tireless effort to battle the cartels eroding his small town. The militia he forms becomes an overnight success, slowly running the Knights Templar cartel out of one town after another. But as their militia numbers grow, their reliance on Mireles’ charisma and leadership quickly leads to internal strife.

A thousand miles away, across the border in Arizona, Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American vet, founded the paramilitary group Arizona Border Patrol. The group’s original purpose was stopping the steady stream of immigrants crossing the border, but they soon realize that the true problem lies with the same vicious cartels smuggling drugs through the rugged mountains.

Over and again, Cartel Land touches on the senseless violence and countless lives taken for next to nothing by the cartels. Testimonials by fear-stricken people serve as reminders as to why Mireles and Foley continue to fight, even as their power grows and the media and government tarnish them. Director Matthew Heineman, who embedded himself deeply and survived fire fights to capture the film’s footage, builds a compelling and painful picture of two men setting their sights on being the change necessary to save their homes from violence and corruption.

Not only does Cartel Land succeed in sheer bravado of filmmaking and powerful human narrative, it’s a masterfully well-crafted picture. Heineman took home awards for Best Director and Best Cinematography at Sundance, and every frame shows why he deserved to win. Lensed with all the dust and sun expected from Arizona and Mexico, the film is all the more biting for its unflinching nature and the beauty with which all the violence is captured. In one scene, as two known killers are caught and attacked by dozens of raging townspeople, the unwavering depiction of these vilified monsters turning into cowering, terrified men is painful to watch.

One of Heineman’s best tricks here is stripping the audience of a cipher, making it difficult to figure out who to root for. The hard, obvious answer is no one. But watching so many men attempt to do good, only to fail so earnestly, helps, even if only in a small way, to make some sense of the cyclical nature of the war raging in these remote towns and villages.

Only late in the third act does Cartel Land waver, as it tries to wrap up the loose ends of its complex stories, but it nevertheless remains engaging, even as some of its subtleties go out the window, forcing the audience to play catch up with some convoluted but essential details. Unbelievably gorgeous, Cartel Land is an important, complex, and towering portrait of two men raging against the lawless terror inflicted on thousands of innocent lives, and the imposing system that traps all of them.

Cartel Land is now playing in select theatres across the US, and opens July 10th in Toronto at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema.

We’ve already seen which films took home precious awards from this year’s Sundance Film Festival; Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s adaptation of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl received top honors winning the Grand Jury Prize for drama (as well as the Audience Award) and The Wolfpack won on the documentary side of things, directing awards went to Robert Eggers for The Witch and Matthew Heineman for Cartel Land, and other winners include Lee Haugen for Dope, Tim Talbott for The Stanford Prison Experiment and sci-fi drama Advantageous.

But which films generated the most buzz on social media? The infographic below (created by Way To Blue, no affiliation with Way Too Indie, we swear!) shows not only which films were most talked about during Sundance, but also which films people intend to view.

Sundance 2015 Social Media Infographic

This measures the proportion of total buzz or conversation which is ‘Intent’ focused or driven, and thus provides a more indicative measure of the impact of social buzz for our clients business, and takes us one step further than awareness. Way To Blue have devised a bespoke keyword search encompassing a range of natural language keyword sets which represent an audience’s intent to view a movie or engage with a brand, for example “gotta see”’, “can’t wait to see” etc. The keyword set is constantly evolving to account for changing colloquialisms, vernacular & languages across our international work, which social media platforms are often so famous for.” This is measured via a bespoke set of keywords WTB have developed to measure and pick up on Intent related conversation within total conversation.