Undeniably Urgent Cause But A Soulless Spectacle
The Territory is visually striking, with polished cinematography and high production value, yet it ultimately feels like a soulless spectacle. It relies on familiar Western tropes; beauty shots, expert interviews, aestheticized destruction, and pushy sound design that dictates emotion. Even with Indigenous camera participation, most of the film, around 70%, still reflects an outsider gaze.
The narrative feels fragmented, as if the filmmaker parachutes in for beautiful shots rather than building a complete, lived in story.
The film ends abruptly, as if unsure of its direction, leaving me feeling abandoned as a viewer. I wanted to truly know the Indigenous people, but the film only skims the surface, never letting us into their lives beyond brief fragments.
Perfectly packaged for Western funders, festivals, and their echo chamber of validation, the film checks every expected box; Indigenous struggle, climate change, Amazon deforestation, while fitting neatly into a digestible format.
A more meaningful approach would involve deeper research and longer immersion, creating a film that reflects the community's ways of seeing and relating to their land. This does not mean handing authorship to untrained individuals; it means using cinematic craft to express a worldview rather than bending that worldview into a pre existing festival friendly arc.
Honeyland demonstrates this alternative. With a fraction of the budget, it achieves intimacy and cultural authenticity without interviews, explanatory devices, or spectacle. It invites viewers to inhabit its characters' rhythms rather than observe them from afar.
The filmmakers clearly have noble intentions and technical skill, yet the result feels designed to satisfy the Western gaze, a polished product made for festivals and funders, validated by the same systems that continue to gatekeep Indigenous storytellers. For all its urgency, it reinforces the very power structures that reward impact driven statement films while sidelining authentic Indigenous voices.
The narrative feels fragmented, as if the filmmaker parachutes in for beautiful shots rather than building a complete, lived in story.
The film ends abruptly, as if unsure of its direction, leaving me feeling abandoned as a viewer. I wanted to truly know the Indigenous people, but the film only skims the surface, never letting us into their lives beyond brief fragments.
Perfectly packaged for Western funders, festivals, and their echo chamber of validation, the film checks every expected box; Indigenous struggle, climate change, Amazon deforestation, while fitting neatly into a digestible format.
A more meaningful approach would involve deeper research and longer immersion, creating a film that reflects the community's ways of seeing and relating to their land. This does not mean handing authorship to untrained individuals; it means using cinematic craft to express a worldview rather than bending that worldview into a pre existing festival friendly arc.
Honeyland demonstrates this alternative. With a fraction of the budget, it achieves intimacy and cultural authenticity without interviews, explanatory devices, or spectacle. It invites viewers to inhabit its characters' rhythms rather than observe them from afar.
The filmmakers clearly have noble intentions and technical skill, yet the result feels designed to satisfy the Western gaze, a polished product made for festivals and funders, validated by the same systems that continue to gatekeep Indigenous storytellers. For all its urgency, it reinforces the very power structures that reward impact driven statement films while sidelining authentic Indigenous voices.
- Zack_Tu_Nan
- Jul 29, 2025