Our Land ★★

Released: 8 May 2026

Director: Orban Wallace

The documentary Our Land falls into a trap entirely of its own making. In the end credits one of the featured participants, author and right-to-roam activist Nick Hayes, is also credited as a consultant. This means Our Land has its thumb very firmly on the scales and, while there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, director Orban Wallace has created a movie with a clear agenda instead of a documentary passively observing events. This is a shame, because the issues at the heart of Our Land go straight at the heart of English national identity in ways rarely so directly shown on screen. Yet a smarter documentary would have built its shape organically instead of by supplying its own tools.

The subject of Our Land is briefly that of access to the nation’s physical land. The entire island was parcelled off into chunks of private property after the Norman conquest and some families have managed to maintain their ownership of that land for nearly 900 years. But whether they have been in place since William the Conqueror or Charles III, all of them have the right to control access to their property. This means huge chunks of England are inaccessible except to the very few. There are a lot of people who don’t agree with that, believing that the country should be common ground meaning anyone can go anywhere for any reason. The simple way of expressing this is ‘right to roam’ – a legal concept which means that anyone can access almost any privately held land if they behave responsibly and aren’t disruptive. Take only photos, leave only footprints kind of thing. No fires, no litter, no disturbing the livestock. In many island nations right of access is guaranteed on beaches, though is always a source of some dispute. And of course the public doesn’t always behave perfectly, which means there are consequences.

England is unusual in Northern Europe for ‘right to roam’ not being guaranteed by law, though a law guaranteeing this right in Scotland was passed in 2003. So Our Land looks at the question in England from both sides, only touching on the Scottish experience of land access at the very end. Over the course of the film we spend time with five different landowners, who generally have a thoughtful attitude to their responsibilities, are embarrassed by their privilege and who agreed to stick their necks out by appearing because they appreciate the sensitivities of the issue. We also meet five different right-to-roam activists, who are equally thoughtful about the privileges denied to them with a lot to say about how land ownership determines who belongs in a place. The activists also brought the documentary cameras on various ‘mass trespasses’ and other protests while they explain why they feel so strongly about the issue.

The opening animation, written by Robert MacFarlane, illustrated by May Kindred Boothby and narrated by Jodie Powell, does an excellent job of summing up the issues of land access in England since Norman times, and how the issues of power and control have changed from then to now. The problem here is that the people who want the right to roam don’t believe landowners should have control over their land. To no one’s surprise, the landowners disagree. Their argument is since they have the responsibility for it, including the necessary costs, it should be up to them how the land is used and who can access it. As an American, for whom it was not unusual to see “TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT” signs growing up, the fact all these arguments are genteel and non-violent is very relaxing. There’s even a mass trespass on some property while a pheasant shoot is happening within earshot, without it seemingly occurring to anyone that things could take a dark turn.

But the dark issue is that everyone in Our Land thinks they know better than everyone else. There is no interest in sharing or compromise or figuring out a way forward that might satisfy everyone, meaning the status quo remains. It is also the case that exactly one of the named on-camera participants is a woman of colour, while all the others are white men. This means the section that briefly claims Britain’s imperial history as the reason British people of colour need the right to roam in order to feel welcome in participating in country life feels forced. By far the bigger issue here is class resentment, with a large side helping of how access to nature improves everyone’s mental health. There are enough peasant/pheasant puns to grind the teeth. The more meaningful repeated refrain is that being on the land gives you a sense of belonging that you can’t access any other way.

Cinematographer Jamie Wolfeld focused on getting some terrific and terrifically atmospheric footage of the landscapes everyone wants to be able to see, as well as slow-motion footage of the various incursions onto private property. It’s hard to tell what were genuine protests at which the cameras happened to be present, though. The fact that at least one was done with participants dressed in Merrie Olde Englande costumes (morris dancers, woad, things of that nature) rather implies more was staged than not. If Mr Wallace had wanted to make a documentary explaining why right to roam is a right that should be granted in England, he should just have said so. It’s a surprise that no attempt was made on camera to find any common ground between the two sets of participants. Instead, by purporting to be an objective documentary while genuinely being no such thing, Our Land sadly cannot be recommended. It should have taken its thumb off the scales in order to give the issues here their full due.