SHOOT first caught up with documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman in 2012 when Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare debuted at the Sundance Film Festival where it earned a nomination for the Documentary Grand Jury Prize. Heineman and Susan Froemke directed and produced Escape Fire, which examined the country’s healthcare crisis, underscoring a needed shift from disease management to prevention, and from placing focus on patients rather than profits. Inspired in part by Donna Karan and her Urban Zen Foundation, the documentary followed dramatic stories of patients as well as of healthcare leaders who are striving to transform the system at the highest levels of medicine, industry, government and even the U.S. military.
Escape Fire also marked the debut of Aisle C Productions, an OgilvyEntertainment unit that was established to develop and produce original, non-branded entertainment.
Heineman made his first impact as a documentarian, teaming with Matt Wiggins to direct the 2009 release Our Time, a feature-length film on what it’s like to be young in America. He and his colleagues drove around the U.S. in an RV for three months, meeting a cross-section of youth to get a better handle on what today’s generation is about.
Eventually getting Our Time in front of some execs at HBO, Heineman wasn’t able to get the network to buy the film–but HBO liked what they saw enough to hire him for a series called The Alzheimer’s Project, which brought him together with noted documentarian Froemke (an associate producer on the famed Grey Gardens, and one of three directors on the Oscar-nominated Lalee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton). The groundbreaking Emmy-nominated HBO series The Alzheimer’s Project aired in May 2009. Heineman and Froemke later reunited for Escape Fire.
After winning awards on the festival circuit–including the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights at the Full Frame Documentary Film Fest in 2012–Escape Fire was theatrically released to critical acclaim by Roadside Attractions/Lionsgate before airing on CNN and earning a News & Documentary Emmy Award nomination.
Now Heineman is back at Sundance with Cartel Land, one of 16 world-premiere documentaries in the U.S. Documentary Competition. Cartel Land introduces us to two modern-day vigilante groups and their shared enemy–the vicious Mexican drug cartels. In the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as “El Doctor,” leads the Autodefensas, a citizen uprising against the violent Knights Templar drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. Meanwhile, in Arizona’s Altar Valley–a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley–Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to stop Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across our border.
Heineman gained unprecedented access to activities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, resulting in a character-driven film which provokes deep questions about lawlessness, the breakdown of order and whether citizens should fight violence with violence.
Going into Sundance, North American TV rights to Cartel Land had already been sold to A&E. Heineman is looking to land theatrical distribution at the festival.
SHOOT: What inspired you to make Cartel Land?
Heineman: I’m very proud of Escape Fire. It meant a lot to me. At the same time I wanted to sort of rebrand if you will and make a totally different type of film. I read an article about the Mexico/Arizona border fight to protect America. I found myself immediately drawn to this world. I knew nothing about border militia groups, vigilantes but became fascinated with them. I spent three to four months in Arizona gaining their trust and ultimately access to these guys.
Some months later, my father sent me an article about vigilantes in Mexico fighting against the drug cartels down there. It was similar to what was going on in Arizona. This sparked my desire to capture these parallel stories about vigilante groups on both sides of the border.
While Cartel Land touches on huge, complex issues, border security, the drug wars, it is quite different from Escape Fire. Cartel Land is really a character-driven film about two incredibly complex men who are leading these vigilante groups–one in Mexico, the other in Arizona. The film became an extremely verite portrait of these two men and the movements they lead.
SHOOT: Was the Arizona group formed to combat drug cartels or just to stop illegal immigration?
Heineman: Their original mission was to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. Two or three years ago they realized the real enemy was not the immigrants but the cartels that controlled human and drug smuggling.
SHOOT: Did the film depart from what you had originally envisioned?
Heineman: The story in Mexico took an unbelievable arc that I never imagined when I started. I originally thought I was telling a story of good versus evil, citizens rising up against the murderous villainous cartels. But the story shifted and became murkier, darker. It turned into a much greater story in scope where the lines between good and evil became quite blurry.
Even in that part of Arizona, you feel like you’re on the edge of the world, in a lawless zone controlled by cartels. This was amplified extraordinarily when I went down to Mexico. I wasn’t prepared for some of the situations I wound up being in–shootouts in the middle of streets, a meth lab, risky situations that end up being sort of the crux, the meat and flesh of the film.
SHOOT: What does the Sundance selection of Cartel Land mean to you personally and professionally?
Heineman: Ever since my experience premiering Escape Fire at Sundance, I dreamed of coming back here. We started filming only about a year and a half ago and began cutting in the spring. We were on a crazy edit schedule trying to get ready for the deadline. Three editors [Matthew Hamachek, Bradley J. Ross, Pax Wassermann] as well as myself worked on cutting the film to get it done on time. Ultimately it paid off.
Sundance is an unbelievable place to launch your film. The Sundance Institute has been supportive of me and my career, providing a grant for the film. Through their Catalyst initiative they helped us raise a good portion of the budget.
SHOOT: What cameras did you deploy on Cartel Land?
Heineman: I shot the bulk of the film myself. Matt Porwoll shot along with me as well. I shot on the Canon Cinema EOS C300 with some time lapse work on the Canon 5D and drone cinematography using the Canon 1D C. For 98 percent of the film, we used two lenses: the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f2.8 and Canon 24-105mm f4. We also traveled with the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 and 2x extender for B-roll. For some specialty shots, we also used the Astroscope adapter for night vision.
I could not speak more highly of the C300. There’s no way we could have made this film otherwise. Through torrential rain, windstorms, dust storms, guns, the camera never failed. I used the body of the camera–no huge rigs–and two different lenses. I had to be mobile and I love the beautiful cinematic quality we got.
