Saturday’s Little Rock Film Festival screenings included “Cartel Land,” which nabbed a Sundance Film Festival U.S. Documentary Directing award for Matt Heineman. The film depicts the efforts of two vigilante groups to thwart the actions of Mexican drug cartels on both sides of the Mexican-American border.
The 98-minute film, a Golden Rock Documentary entry screened at the Clinton Presidential Center on Saturday, parallels the efforts of the U.S.-based Arizona Border Recon with the rise and fall of the “Autodefensas,” the armed, citizens’ organization that rallies to drive the cartels out of several communities in Mexico’s Michuacan region before being co-opted by the government.
While talking up their own importance in the fight against the cartels, the U.S. vigilantes — some of whom got their start trying to collar illegal immigrants — do little more than play army as they patrol the border with few filmed results. By comparison, the “Autodefensas,” while not always welcome among the citizenry they try to protect, are much more successful in curtailing the cartel efforts before succumbing to internal corruption and the interference of the Mexican government.
In the film’s opening minutes a group of methamphetamine “chefs” reveal they were taught their craft by an American father-son duo and explain that most of the product goes back to the United States.
“You can’t stop the cartel no matter what you do,” says a character late in the film.
Futility is also among the themes of Lyric R. Cabral’s and David Felix Sutcliffe’s “(T)error,” a 93-minute Cinematic Nonfiction entry that pulls off the unprecedented feat of recording an actual FBI informant operation in progress.
The film is a dual, first-person account of informant and former Black Panthers member Saeed “Shariff” Torres and his target, terror suspect Khalifah Al-Akili, who becomes wise to the operation and goes on camera. As each man speaks on the record without the other’s knowledge, a decidedly unglamorous tale, complete with FBI bungling, unfolds against a blue collar backdrop of Pittsburgh-area McDonald’s restaurants, Goodwill stores and Dunkin’ Donuts shops.
“Sometimes I don’t know if I made the right decision,” Torres says, musing to himself after the investigation’s less than satisfactory payoff.
In her Q&A following the Saturday evening screening at the Ron Robinson Theater, Cabral described the tricky task of documenting an ongoing counterterrorism case without the two men learning of each other’s involvement in the film, as well as the challenge of avoiding tampering with an ongoing FBI investigation.
On Sunday, the World Shorts Narrative winner “The Way Things Are” preceeded the Golden Rock Narrative Grand Prize winner “Applesauce” at the Ron Robinson Theater.
The 27-minute short film by Guy Nemesh depicts a moment of weakness experienced by a mother — surrounded by a succesful family that includes her expectant daughter — seeking meaning and fulfillment in her own life.
In contrast to the somber “The Way Things Are,” “Applesauce” is a decidedly dark comedy that explodes with crackling dialogue and characters the viewer can tolerate just enough to watch suffer as they deal with the repercussions of various mistakes. Directed by Onur Tukel, the 91-minute film depicts a chain of events set off when a New York high school teacher accepts a radio talk show host’s challenge to his listeners to phone in with the worst thing they’ve ever done.