The Settlers (2024)

Felipe Gálvez Haberle's debut feature is a brutal and uncompromising take on the exploitation and colonisation of Tierra del Fuego, an area that borders Chile and Argentina, at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Both Santiago political establishment and European commercial interests are behind the butchering of local Indigenous peoples; and we learn notorious businessman Jose Menendez (who was granted land rights for sheep farming) has paid mercenaries to hunt and murder Patagonian natives in an effort to claim the region.

We join three hired killers including an ex-British army (brilliantly portrayed with dead-behind-the-eyes indifference by Mark Stanley) on their murderous exploration of the area, where they encounter both locals and at one point another British gun-for-hire, one that is every bit as foreboding as Stanley's Alexander Maclennon.

The film is an incredibly atmospheric and unsettling drama, very violent at times and can be particularly nasty as well. It makes it all the more effective, and the stunning cinematography by Simone D'Arcangelo vividly depicts the setting and feel of the horrors abound. This results in searing beauty jarringly set alongside appalling brutality, and the mere ninety minutes that the film runs to at times feels longer, but certainly not in a bad way.

The Settlers is a breathtaking debut piece from Haberle, enlightening a shocking period of history that is undoubtedly not widely known, especially in these parts. Although we should be well aware of the horrors that the British army have been guilty of in the past, this is a time that will not be in school history books (a bit like the much more recent troubles in Northern Ireland) so it serves as a disturbing history lesson as well as a quite brilliant piece of film making. What Haberle does next is very much something to look forward to. 8.0/10