Oleh Senstov’s is not really a film in the conventional sense. Nor is it really a documentary. It can best be described, as the filmmaker himself puts it in a filmed introduction, as “material.
” That’s because the film (for the purposes of this review, let’s call it such) is the result of an accident. It’s composed of 90 minutes of raw, unedited footage captured by a GoPro camera perched on the filmmaker’s helmet while he was serving in the Ukrainian military. Senstov unwittingly turned on the camera after his infantry fighting vehicle was destroyed by Russian artillery, and the footage documents his ensuing efforts to call for help in evacuating his unit even while they’re under fire and running out of ammunition.
The result, receiving its world premiere at the , is as immediate a portrait of war as you could imagine, alternately harrowing and boring, and undeniably true to its title. Sentsov, who entered the Ukraine military shortly after the Russian invasion, is an experienced director with three feature films to his credit. He’s also an activist and dissident who was charged by Russia with planning terrorist attacks and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
A year after receiving the European Parliament‘s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, he was released as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Russia and Ukraine. Senstsov wasn’t aware that he was filming during the battle that occurred last summer, only discovering the footage months later. He co.