''The Settlers'' (

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

: ''Los colonos'') is a 2023

revisionist Western The revisionist Western (also called the anti-Western, sometimes revisionist antiwestern) is a sub-genre of the Western film. Designated a post-classical variation of the traditional Western, the revisionist subverts the myth and romance of th ...

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...

film directed by Felipe Gálvez Haberle (in his directorial debut), who co-wrote the script with Antonia Girardi in collaboration with Mariano Llinás. The film stars

Mark Stanley Mark Robert Speight, known professionally as Mark Stanley, is an English actor. He portrayed Grenn in the HBO series ''Game of Thrones''. He is also known for his roles in the films ''Kajaki'' and '' Our Kind of Traitor'', and the series ''Dic ...

, Camilo Arancibia, Benjamin Westfall, Alfredo Castro, Mishell Guaña,

Sam Spruell Sam Spruell (born 1 January 1977) is a British actor. He is best known for playing villainous roles in film and television including Oleg Malankov in '' Taken 3'', Finn in '' Snow White and the Huntsman'' and Swarm in '' Doctor Who: Flux''. He a ...

Marcelo Alonso Marcelo Alejandro Alonso Claro (born 19 March 1969) is a Chilean actor and theater director. Alonso has a degree in Acting from the Theater Department of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Chile. In 1994, he debuted in the ''Champaña'' t ...

and Adriana Stuven. It is a co-production between Chile, Argentina, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, France, Denmark, Sweden and Germany. ''The Settlers'' had its world premiere at the

76th Cannes Film Festival The 76th annual Cannes Film Festival was a film festival that took place from 16 to 27 May 2023. Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund served as jury president. With the French film '' Anatomy of a Fall'' winning the Palme d'Or, the festival's top p ...

on 17 May 2023. It competed for

Un Certain Regard (, meaning 'a certain glance') is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's official selection. It is run at the Debussy, parallel to the competition for the . This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob. The section presents 20 films w ...

and

Caméra d'Or The Caméra d'Or ("''Golden Camera''") is an award of the Cannes Film Festival for the best first feature film presented in one of the Cannes' selections (Official Selection, Directors' Fortnight The Directors' Fortnight (french: Quinzaine des ...

, and alongside those was honored with the

FIPRESCI Prize The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI, short for Fédération Internationale de la PRESse CInématographique) is an association of national organizations of professional film critics and film journalists from around the world fo ...

, becoming the first Chilean production to win that award. It was selected as the Chilean entry for Best International Feature Film at the

96th Academy Awards {{Infobox film awards , number = 96 , award = Academy Awards , image = , caption = , alt = , date = March 10, 2024 , site = Dolby TheatreHollywood, Los Angele ...

Synopsis

In 1893, Segundo, a Chilean mestizo, MacLennan, a Scottish veteran, and Bill, an American

mercenary A mercenary, sometimes also known as a soldier of fortune or hired gun, is a private individual, particularly a soldier, that joins a military conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any ...

, embark on an expedition on horseback to delimit and reclaim the lands that the State has granted to José Menéndez. What appears to be an administrative expedition turns into a violent hunt for

Onas The Selk'nam, also known as the Onawo or Ona people, are an indigenous people in the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile, including the Tierra del Fuego islands. They were one of the last native groups in South America to be enco ...

, the natives of the

Tierra del Fuego Tierra del Fuego (, ; Spanish for "Land of the Fire", rarely also Fireland in English) is an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan. The archipelago consists of the main island, Isla ...

archipelago. The

Selk'nam genocide The Selk'nam genocide was the genocide of the Selk'nam people, one of three indigenous tribes populating the Tierra del Fuego in South America, from the second half of the 19th to the early 20th century. The genocide spanned a period of betwe ...

lies at the core of the film.

Cast

* Camilo Arancibia as Segundo * Benjamin Westfall as Bill *

as Alexander MacLennan * Alfredo Castro as José Menéndez * Mishell Guaña as Kiepja *

as Colonel Martin *

as Vicuña * Adriana Stuven as Josefina Menéndez * Mariano Llinás as

Francisco Moreno Francisco Pascasio Moreno (May 31, 1852 – November 22, 1919) was a prominent explorer and academic in Argentina, where he is usually referred to as ''Perito'' Moreno (''perito'' means "specialist, expert"). Perito Moreno has been credited as on ...

* Agustín Rittano as Captain Ambrosio * Emily Orueta as Granddaughter *

Luis Machín Luis Alfonso Manuel Machín (born April 10, 1968 in Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina), better known as Luis Machín, is an Argentine theater, film and television actor. He is one of the most respected actors in the Argentine artistic medium and his ...

as Monseñor

Release

Festival

It had its world premiere on 22 May 2023, at the

. then it was screened on 12 August 2023, in the Fiction Competition section of the 27th Lima Film Festival and soon on 7 September 2023, in the Centerpiece section at the 48th Toronto International Film Festival.

Distribution

MUBI Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; The Auteurs before 2010) is a global curated film streaming platform, production company and film distributor. Mubi produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusivel ...

announced that they have acquired distribution rights for multiple territories, including North America, Latin America, the UK, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Turkey, India, and the Benelux. They plan to release the film theatrically in the UK and the US.

Reception

Critical reception

On the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, 93% of 55 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.5/10.

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which uses a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

, assigned the film a score of 82 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Accolades

References

External links