Get the latest gossip
‘Militantropos’ Review: Austere Anti-War Doc Employs Formal Control in an Impassioned Defense of Ukraine
Ukrainian doc from Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova and Simon Mozgovyi brings an anthropologist’s eye to how war is lived through, waged and filmed.
A school where children have been forced to stay, with artwork on the walls — some of which are normal kids’ drawings and others of which depict bombings — gives a grounded sense of place to the horrific childhoods endured by young Ukrainians. This film’s anthropological interest in how people are shaped by an ongoing immersion in a state of war is simultaneously deeply personally felt and conveyed with a sense of analytical remove. Crucially, when guns fire and bombs detonate, the documentary eschews the language of cinema: The filmmakers don’t zoom in for a slow-motion shot of a man’s face grimacing as he dies.
Or read this on Variety