There was no doubt in any IndieWire editor’s mind when selecting our list of the Best First Films of 2023: Felipe Gálvez’s “The Settlers” had to be on there. The otherworldly Western, which Mubi is opening in theaters January 12, is Chile’s submission to the 96th Academy Awards, and you can see why: It’s bold, uncompromising storytelling — for a story that needs to be told. Watch the IndieWire exclusive trailer for “The Settlers” below.
Set in the 1890s, “The Settlers” is about the genocide of the Indigenous Selk’nam people who lived in Tierra del Fuego, where the landscapes look more like Iceland than what you might first associate with South America. This is a history that hasn’t often been taught in Chile, and it’s a mark of the nation’s reckoning with its own history that its selection committee for the Oscars would pick this and help further illuminate this dark chapter.
Mark Stanley plays Alexander MacLennan, a Scot expatriate who did the bidding of a wealthy landowner in murdering the Selk’nam who lived on his vast holdings. But intriguingly, MacLennan insists on a half-Indigenous companion during this genocidal campaign: Segundo (Camilo Arancibia). He’s also forced to take on a boorish American cowboy (Benjamin Westfall). This is a history lesson that’s far from homework, as “The Settlers” unfolds as a gripping character study in a tight 97 minutes and features some of the year’s best cinematography, courtesy of DP Simone D’Arcangelo. Think Budd Boetticher meets “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
The thing that’s particularly remarkable is how first-time feature director Gálvez accomplishes all of this — including directing some very atmospheric battle scenes — without overly underlining his themes: This is a film committed not just to depicting a neglected part of history but to showing how it is that official national histories are created in the first place. No wonder it won the FIPRESCI Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, where it world premiered in May. It’s since played at San Sebastian, TIFF, and the New York Film Festival.
Watch the trailer for “The Settlers,” which opens in theaters January 12, below.
