Lucrecia Martel Director
Filmography Selected
Born in 1966, Martel studied animation at Avellaneda Experimental (AVEX), attended the National Experimentation Filmmaking School (ENERC) for several years, and studied Communication Science. She directed a number of short films between 1988 and 1994, including Rey Muerto (Dead King), when was part of Historías Breves I (Brief Tales I). In 2001, Martel directed the film La Ciénaga (The Swamp), which won awards in Berlin, Havana, Toulouse, and Sundance, among other festivals. In 2004, Martel wrote and directed La Niña Santa (The Holy Girl), which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival that year. In 2008 came The Headless Woman (La Mujer sin Cabazo), and now after a long interval, Zama, which premiered in the 2017 Venice Film Festival.
2025: Nuestra Tierra (Landmarks)
2018: Zama
2007: The Headless Woman (La Mujer sin Cabeza)
2004: The Holy Girl (La Niña Santa)
2001: The Swamp (La Ciénaga)
1995: Rey Muerto, short
“The Furious Moral Clarity of Lucrecia Martel...
In the Argentinean filmmaker’s new documentary...and a recently restored masterpiece, “The Headless Woman,” (see website for more) an elusiveness of form becomes the most direct way to the truth.
Martel began planning the film while working on “Zama” ...(see website for more). Both films, though entirely different in form and focus, share a blistering denunciation of colonialist oppression and a commitment to ushering Indigenous lives out of the shadows of Argentinean history.”
Justin Chang, The New Yorker
“Lucrecia Martel’s beautiful account of an Indigenous murder case...about the shooting of Javier Chocobar (it) is a mannered and dignified work, laden with post-colonial tension and the weight of institutions.”
Leslie Felperin, The Guardian
BEST FILMS OF 2026:
INDIEWIRE
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
VULTURE
SLANT magazine
THE FILM STAGE
"It’s hard to stop thinking about Lucrecia Martel‘s gutting true-crime documentary “Nuestra Tierra (Landmarks),” long in the works and about the 2009 murder of an Argentine Indigenous leader, after you’ve seen it."
Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire
"An urgent film with a bleeding heart that deserves to be seen by everyone around the world. Martel has made an essential work."
Jourdain Searles, The Film Stage
"Lucrecia Martel's beguilingly sensuous dramas have depicted her country's class and racial fissures in numerous ways...But the gifted Argentinia auteur has never tackled the issue as directly as in Landmarks/Nuestra Tierra."
Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter
"A sobring investigation of an indigenous leader's murder. The film is less a portrait of one martyred man than a mosaic of a resistant community."
Marshall Shaffer, The Slant Magazine
"A powerful work of reeclamation and advocacy for native peoples who have long been disenfranchised and dehumanized by systemic forces in colonial Argentiana."As Martel shows us, this isn’t just about who killed Chocobar and why. It’s about the bullet being one of many wounds inflicted upon indigenous peoples over 500 years of Argentinian history."
Clint Worthington, Rogerebert.com
