While riding the subway in New York City, a self-taught cinematographer found inspiration in a Rolling Stone article and turned it into an award-winning documentary.

Matt Heineman’s “Cartel Land,” which showed at the Sundance Film Festival, tells the stories of an Arizonian drug cartel vigilante, Tim “Nailer” Foley, and a Michoacán-based physician-turned-vigilante Jose “El Doctor” Mireles, as they take on drug problems in Mexico. The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs held a viewing of the documentary as well as a meet-and-greet with Heineman on Thursday.

“It was a world I knew nothing about,” Heineman said. “What fascinated me about the film and continues to fascinate me is: What happens when government institutions fail? What happens when citizens feel the need to take the law into their own hands to protect their families and communities?”

Heineman added that he wanted to provide a window into a world that people will never see and introduce people to characters they will never meet. He said there has been a lot of coverage about the war on drugs but that he wanted to see what was happening between everyday people in the middle of the war.

More than 80,000 people have been killed and more than 20,000 people have disappeared since 2007 in Mexico, Heineman said. He added that he wanted to see the way the war is being funded through the consumption of drugs, as well as the power of human nature in the face of conflict.

Heineman spent six months getting access to Nailer and gaining his trust before he went to Arizona for four months to film. While in Arizona, his father sent him another article about the “citizen uprising” of the Autodefensas against the Knights Templar drug cartel. It was after this article that Heineman decided to “create a parallel story on vigilantism on both sides of the border, fighting the same common enemy.”

In the case of Nailer, a veteran, Heineman said he believes that Nailer felt as though it was his duty to continue to protect the United States, and in his mind, it was a fear that the Mexican drug wars and the violence that comes with them will seep their way into the U.S.

Mireles fought for basic survival because he was living under the rule of a vicious cartel that created a lawless society, Heineman said. The journeys that these vigilantes go on — Mireles in particular — are ones that Heineman feels cannot be written.

The non-Spanish speaking documentarian said that although he picked up “un poquito,” meaning “a little,” of Spanish while filming, he had a translator with him.

“There are certain things where I didn’t need to know Spanish to know what is happening … A guy is running a gun up in someone’s face, interrogating him … You didn’t need to speak Spanish to understand what was happening,” he said.

After being in places he never imagined he would be, Heineman said he focused on the art of filmmaking to help him get through it.

“It was an absolutely terrifying film to make … The film led me into some crazy places like shootouts between the vigilantes and the cartels, meth labs in the dark, places of torture … I found solace in the craft,” he said.

Yet Heineman said it wasn’t the adrenaline-filled moments that were the scariest. A particular interview with a woman who witnessed her husband being chopped up into pieces and burned to death by the cartel remains with him.

“To be in the room with this woman and to see her body there, but almost as though her whole soul had been sucked out of her … That is what mentally stuck with me,” he said.

Despite the difficulty, Heineman said he will continue to work on films similar to “Cartel Land” because he said, “It is an honor and a privilege to tell these stories,” and he said he feels like he has an obligation to tell these stories and generate important conversations.

Published on October 11, 2015 at 9:43 pm

Contact Ali: Ali Linan