Lucrecia Martel: Un destino común

April 4–19, 2026

Lucrecia Martel: Our Land/Nuestra Tierra, 2025
Lucrecia Martel: Zama, 2017
Lucrecia Martel: The Headless Woman, 2008
Lucrecia Martel: La ciénaga, 2001
Lucrecia Martel: The Holy Girl, 2004

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Past Films

La ciénaga
Lucrecia Martel
Argentina, 2001
Saturday, April 4 6:30 PM
Introduced by Luis Madrigal
Two extended families suffer through a heat wave in Martel’s award-winning portrayal of social inertia, class, and racial dynamics. “Every shot is dense with life, yet the movie is highly focused, a small masterpiece” (Meredith Brody, Chicago Reader).
View Details
The Holy Girl
Lucrecia Martel
Argentina, 2004
Thursday, April 9 7 PM
Introduced by Ramsey McGlazer
An adolescent girl tries to save a man from sin in Lucrecia Martel’s hallucinatory look at religious devotion, sexual awakening, Lolita obsessions, and Catholic repressions in small-town Argentina. “A film that defies categorization, but I’m tempted to call it a miracle” (A. O. Scott, New York Times).
View Details
Our Land/Nuestra Tierra
Lucrecia Martel
Argentina, United States, Mexico, France, Denmark, Netherlands, 2025
Wednesday, April 15 7 PM
Lucrecia Martel, Ernesto de Carvalho, and Natalia Brizuela in Conversation
“This film chronicles Argentina’s strategies to deny the Chuschagasta Community their territory. Drawing from the 2018 trial of Javier Chocobar’s assassins (2009), community conversations, and their photo archives, we reconstructed the community’s journey from the 17th century to today” (Lucrecia Martel).
View Details
Canuto’s Transformation
Ariel Kuaray Ortega, Ernesto de Carvalho
Brazil, 2023
Friday, April 17 7 PM
Ernesto de Carvalho, Lucrecia Martel, and Natalia Brizuela in Conversation
A compelling hybrid documentary filmed in a Mbyá-Guaraní community on the border of Brazil and Argentina deals with the local story of a man who transformed into a jaguar.
View Details
Selected Short Films of Lucrecia Martel
Saturday, April 18 4 PM
Lucrecia Martel and Blanca Missé in Conversation
An impressive array of Lucrecia Martel’s short films, including a commissioned work by the fashion house Miu Miu and her 2022 short Maid.
View Details
The Headless Woman
Lucrecia Martel
Argentina, 2008
World Premiere of the New 4K Digital Restoration
Saturday, April 18 7 PM
Lucrecia Martel and Iggy Cortez in Conversation
A woman involved in a potentially tragic hit-and-run accident tries to ignore what happened in Lucrecia Martel’s disorienting, critically acclaimed suspense thriller. “If Hitchcock and Antonioni ever had an interest in class guilt, you’d have Martel” (Wesley Morris).
View Details
Zama
Lucrecia Martel
Argentina, 2017
Sunday, April 19 7 PM
Lucrecia Martel and Luis Madrigal in Conversation
Lucrecia Martel’s 2017 feature is a glimpse into the colonial abyss, adapted from a famed Argentine novel about a Spanish officer in a remote proto-Paraguayan outpost. “Perplexing and thrilling in equal measure” (Variety).
View Details

Lucrecia Martel: Un destino común

April 4–19, 2026

In conjunction with the acclaimed director’s residency at UC Berkeley, BAMPFA presents Lucrecia Martel: Un destino común, a retrospective of her films, including short films, rarely seen on the big screen, that offer insights into her methods and obsession with dislocating the stories that uphold the illusion of a single world. Martel’s atmospheric movies explore the moral, psychological, and social decay of characters willfully blind to the historical violence and continuing social cost they pay for their privilege. In the Salta trilogy, set in Martel’s home province in Argentina’s northwest, middle-class adults exist in an atmosphere of looming threat, self-absorbed and lurching toward self-destruction, as their servants endure and their children are forgotten. Set in the late eighteenth century, Zama (2017) depicts the depravity of colonialism via the delusions of an officer of the Spanish crown. Palpably present in all these films, Indigenous people are the central focus of Our Land/Nuestra Tierra, Martel’s first documentary. A decade in the making, it chronicles, according to Martel, “Argentina’s strategies to deny the Chuschagasta community their territory.” Martel concentrates the film around the trial of the men who killed activist Javier Chocobar in 2009, showing the defense team working to deny the existence of the Chuschagasta, while interviews with community members who share their stories, home movies, and photographs offer irrefutable evidence of their existence. As in her fiction films, Martel’s use of sound immerses the viewer in the cramped space of the courtroom, which contrasts with the expansive drone-filmed lands for which the Chuschagasta continue to fight.

—Kate MacKay and Natalia Brizuela

Less

Film Series Sponsor: Margarita Gandia and Diana Campoamor

Lucrecia Martel: Un destino común is made possible by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Department of Film & Media at UC Berkeley, and is cocurated by Natalia Brizuela and Kate MacKay.

Copresented by The Townsend Center for the Humanities

Thanks to Marcus Hu, Strand Releasing; Todd Weiner and Steven K. Hill, UCLA Film & Television Archive; Brian Belovarac, Janus Films; Benjamin Domenech, Brenda Erdei, Eliana Tujschinaider, Rei Pictures; and Max Brun, Hi Production.

The 4K digital restoration of The Headless Woman was carried out from the 4K scan of the original 35 mm camera negative, a first-generation internegative, and the original digital sound mix. Reference elements included a duplicate negative and a vintage 35 mm release print. The process included digital cleaning to remove the imperfections of time and color correction to restore the original brightness, contrast, and chromatic values. Effects created in the digital intermediate were preserved.

The restoration was produced by Rei Pictures, with the support of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Additional support and organization by Strand Releasing USA. Carried out at Cubic Restoration in Buenos Aires. Color grading was led by Gustavo Biazzi, under the consultation of cinematographer Bárbara Álvarez; digital image restoration by Margarita Moscoso; sound work by Federico Esquerro; and mastering by Julián Giulianelli. The project was coordinated by Fernando Madedo, and the entire process was supervised by director Lucrecia Martel.

Lucrecia Martel: Un destino común

Lucrecia Martel: Un destino común

April 4–19, 2026

Past Films

La ciénaga

The Holy Girl

Our Land/Nuestra Tierra

Canuto’s Transformation

Selected Short Films of Lucrecia Martel

The Headless Woman

Zama