Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov’s latest feature Real, his first since the 2021 Venice comp title Rhino, opens with a messy GoPro shot of Ukrainian soldiers taking cover in a shallow trench in the Donbas, the country’s front line in its defense against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the country.
Across the next 100 minutes, the camera barely moves from this spot. We don’t see any warfare but we hear it. Soldiers are attacked and Russian bombs are launched.
The immediate contemporary comparison, in terms of form, would be Jonathan Glazer’s unwavering Oscar-winner The Zone Of Interest.
Unlike Glazer’s fiction movie, however, Real was captured unintentionally by Sentsov on his official military helmet camera.
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