“Cartel Land” is a new documentary directed by Matthew Heineman about two citizens action groups in Mexico City and in the US who rise up and make a stand against the drugs mafia.

It is people taking justice into their own hands where governments have so patently failed. These vigilante groups fight against their mutual enemy, and their members come from all walks of life. The film shows the daily life of one, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town doctor who leads his Autodefensas group against a deadly enemy, the violent Knights Templar cartel.

At the same time in Altar valley, a 83-kilometre-long desert corridor in Arizona known as “cocaine alley”, army veteran Tim “Nailer” Foley leads a paramilitary group, Arizona Border recon.
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“I embedded myself with both groups over a year and, as I said, the film and the story went in a direction I could never have predicted. But part of the story too is about what provokes men and women to do that? What provokes men and women to rise up in arms