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" For his new documentary Cartel Land, which comes out this Friday, director Matthew Heineman, embedded himself with two vigilante groups rising up against the Mexican drug cartels on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. In Michoac\u00E1n, Mexico, a civilian group led by a small-town physician called the Autodefensas wage war against an infiltrating cartel. Meanwhile, in Arizona, he follows a self-appointed border-patrol movement on the lookout for drug-trafficking coyotes. It&amp;#039;s a harrowing account of enforcing your own law in a lawless land, and Heineman went under fire\u2014filming through shootouts in Mexico\u2014to show us. Popular Mechanics: The movie feels so urgent. Why aren&amp;#039;t we reading about the cartels and the vigilante movement in The New York Times everyday? Matthew Heineman: This is a war that&amp;#039;s happening in a country that&amp;#039;s just south of us, a war in which 80,000 people have been killed since 2007. More than 20,000 people disappeared. We talk about ISIS, and all of these groups around the world, but Mexico is just south of us. It&amp;#039;s a war that we are largely responsible for. We are consuming the drugs that are the basis of this war. As long as there is a demand for drugs up here, there will be a supply for drugs down there. Unfortunately, what that&amp;#039;s caused is an enormous amount of violence, both within the cartels and especially against everyday citizens.   When you went down to Michoac\u00E1n, did you have any anticipation of what you were going to bear witness to? I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I&amp;#039;d never been in a war zone, I&amp;#039;d never filmed in situations like this before. I found myself in crazy places: in shootouts between the cartel and the vigilantes, in meth labs in the dark desert night, in places of torture. It was frightening. But exhilarating. So, how do you film a documentary in a war zone? I had a small crew. There&amp;#039;s roughly four of us on average who were down there. A really talented shooter that I brought with me, Matt Porwoll. A local producer and a local fixer. We did the sound ourselves. But for some of the more intimate scenes, it was often just me filming alone. I actually felt like the process of focusing on the craft of filmmaking\u2014focusing on focusing, exposing, framing\u2014that calmed me down in those insane moments.      Is there a scene that stands out as one of those particularly insane moments?  There&amp;#039;s one scene in which I&amp;#039;m riding in the back of a car with the Autodefensas. Several of their men had been assassinated the day before. They were going on this witch-hunt to find the people responsible for that. We were at an intersection and they started getting shot at. We jumped out of the car and took cover. So, the Autodefensas go through town looking for the people that were just shooting at them and come across this man who they believe had done this. They strip him away from his family and shove him in the back of their car. It was this insane scene where I was shoved in between two seats as this guy is interrogating the man who they think is a potential cartel member, running his gun up around his neck and his face. And it was so disturbing to witness.  Obviously, there were the human instincts as to what I wanted to do, but I was there to witness this. I was there to capture this. This is as the car is flying at 60 miles per hour through these windy streets. It was a really difficult scene to capture, both emotionally and just physically thrashing around in the back of the car as this interrogation is happening. It gets hard to tell who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.  That was the scariest part about making the film. I could be on an opertivo, I could be in the back of a truck with a group of men, and I truly didn&amp;#039;t know if I was with the good guys or the bad guys. Or the good guys who were now the bad guys, or the bad guys who were now the good guys. The lines between good and evil were so blurred. And became ever more blurry as time went on in the film. That complexity is what drove me, to try to really understand what was happening drove me to keep going down there. What&amp;#039;s the level of sophistication in the technology vigilante groups on both sides of the border are using?  [In Michoac\u00E1n] it was pretty DIY vigilantism. There was no James Bond-like lair where they went back to and had special-ops teams like. It was pretty rough and tumble everyday citizens rising up. Especially in Mexico, it was farmers, doctors, lawyers. They had guns and they had bulletproof trucks and bulletproof vests, and made their own bulletproof cars out of steel and other things. For me, right away I was wondering where these things were coming from. Where is this money coming from, who&amp;#039;s funding this?  In Arizona, they&amp;#039;re pretty technologically savvy. They have decryptors to break into the radio frequencies of the cartel. We could be driving through the valley and hear the cartel talking about where we&amp;#039;re moving and about drug shipments going through. Even though you&amp;#039;re in America, you do feel like you&amp;#039;re in a land controlled by the cartels.  Does the U.S. Border Patrol appreciate what groups like Arizona Border Recon are doing? What&amp;#039;s the relationship between the two? I think they do appreciate them, actually. The Border Patrol is very much understaffed, undermanned, underfunded. I think they feel like they need all the help they can get. You know, these vigilante groups and Nailer and his men are helping. They have the same goal in mind, which is to stop this from coming northward. But officially they can&amp;#039;t speak about it. Officially they can&amp;#039;t be working together, although the reality on the ground is much different. You were able to actually watch the production of crystal meth when you were in Mexico. From the moment I stepped foot into Mexico I wanted to get in a meth lab. It was the lifeblood of the cartel, it was their main source of revenue. Most of the meth consumed in the U.S. comes from the Michoac\u00E1n, from this cartel. Every single shoot I asked somebody if they knew somebody who knew somebody to get in. Eventually we found someone who we thought could get us in. And kept sort of teasing us. &amp;quot;Next shoot, you&amp;#039;ll have it.&amp;quot; I gave up on it.  It was on our second to last shoot, and one of those horrible days where nothing was going right. Our car broke down in a dangerous area in the middle of the mountains. We get this call saying &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re in. Be in this town square at 6 PM.&amp;quot; We booked it over and a group of men drove us through these other towns and through a field. They stopped and said they were going to provide protection and another car drove up and said &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re gonna lead you in.&amp;quot; And then we were in.   I&amp;#039;d always dreamed of shooting the scene in this trailer-like atmosphere with halogen lights and stuff. When we get to the field, the sun was setting and was starting to get really dark. I don&amp;#039;t shoot with lights. I was like this is this amazing thing I&amp;#039;ve been wanting to capture for almost a year, and I have no way to see what&amp;#039;s happening. The head chef starts walking around and showing me the process of cooking meth and with this little flashlight he&amp;#039;s pointing things out. It&amp;#039;s with that little flashlight that we ended up sort of lighting that scene. Otherwise it would been pitch black. 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<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/interviews/a16302/cartel-land-documentary-director/>