101 min | NR | January 12, 2024 | MUBI
A wealthy landowner in 1901 Patagonia hires three men to clear his sheep ranch of the indigenous people who live on it. Felipe Gálvez turns the founding of modern Chile into a Western built on extermination. The frontier myth gets the autopsy it deserves.
Segundo is a mestizo marksman in 1901 Tierra del Fuego. A wealthy landowner named Menéndez wants the native Selk’nam people gone from his land so his sheep can graze without interruption. He hires a Scottish lieutenant and an American mercenary and orders them to clear a route to the Atlantic. Segundo rides with them because his aim makes him useful and his silence makes him safe. Felipe Gálvez builds a Western around the genocide that founds the modern Chilean state. The film treats the frontier not as a place of opportunity but as a ledger written in blood.
Camilo Arancibia plays Segundo as a man who watches everything and says almost nothing. He registers each atrocity without protest because protest would make him the next target. Mark Stanley plays MacLennan, the Scottish lieutenant, with the cold entitlement of an empire that mistakes cruelty for order. Alfredo Castro arrives late as Menéndez and turns a handful of scenes into a study of how wealth launders murder into history. Benjamín Westfall plays Bill, the American, with a swagger that curdles into open sadism. The performances refuse to soften these men or explain them away.
Gálvez directs his first feature with a control that never loosens. He and co-writer Antonia Girardi structure the film as a journey that becomes an indictment, then leap forward to show the state absorbing the crime into its official story. Simone D’Arcangelo shoots the Patagonian expanse in widescreen and frames the men as small figures pinned against grass and sky. The beauty of the landscape makes the violence staged inside it more obscene. The camera holds on acts of brutality long enough to deny the audience any escape. Wind and gunfire carry scenes that dialogue would only cheapen.
The Settlers refuses the comfort of distance. It names the men who profited and shows how their crimes became the founding paperwork of a country. Segundo survives by making himself invisible, and the film asks what that survival costs a man who watches and does not act. Gálvez offers no redemption and no lesson that lets the viewer off the hook. He builds a portrait of how nations are made and insists that the audience look at the foundation. The result is a debut that treats history as an open wound rather than a settled account.