Dr. José Manuel Mireles (known as "El Doctor") leads the Autodefensas , a grassroots citizen uprising against the brutal Knights Templar drug cartel.
Released in 2015, Matthew Heineman’s Oscar-nominated documentary offers an unflinching, cinema-vérité look at the Mexican drug war. It avoids traditional "talking heads" or statistical overlays to immerse viewers directly in the lives of two vigilante groups operating on either side of the U.S.–Mexico border. Parallel Vigilante Stories Cartel Land
The film weaves together two primary narratives of citizens taking the law into their own hands after their respective governments failed to protect them: Cartel Land