‘Real’: Karlovy Vary Review

Dir: Oleh Sentsov. Ukraine/Croatia. 2024. 91mins

The title of this bruising real-time documentary by Oleh Sentsov is taken from the codename for the mission it documents: an operation during the Ukrainian counter-offensive, in the early stages of the war with Russia. But it could equally describe the subject matter. Shot, unintentionally, on the GoPro camera on Sentsov’s helmet, and unfolding entirely in a trench with the sounds of battle and bombardment just out of frame, this is arguably as authentic and unvarnished an account of the frontline military experience as it’s possible to capture. It is real – grimly and unflinchingly so.

As authentic and unvarnished an account of the frontline military experience as it’s possible to capture

Crimea-born Sentsov (Gamer, Rhino) joined the Ukrainian Defence Forces shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. He served – and continues to serve – in the army as a lieutenant, having previously been arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison for his involvement in the 2013 Maidan protests. He was released  in 2019, following a 145-day hunger strike, as part of a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine.

Real is Sentsov’s first foray into non-fiction filmmaking, and follows his propulsive and bloody 2021 underworld drama, Rhino. Real will likely draw comparisons to Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s frontline documentary Restrepo, and to Mstyslav Chernov’s Oscar-winning 20 Days In Mariupol. But what sets the film apart is the fact that it unfolds in a single unbroken shot – it’s 90-or-so gruelling, bewildering minutes captured at random from a war which is now well into its second year. Following its premiere in Karlovy Vary, the film should be a title of interest on the festival circuit and in events with a geopolitical focus.

The film, we learn, was completely unplanned. During a military operation, Sentsov was in a Bradley (an armoured fighting vehicle) which was destroyed by Russian artillery fire. Sentsov found himself in a nearby trench, manning a radio and attempting, with mounting urgency, to arrange for evacuation for other members of his unit. While checking that his GoPro camera was still attached to his helmet, Sentsov inadvertently turned it on. The film, like the war itself, has no neat beginning and no satisfying conclusion. It ends abruptly: the footage stops when the camera battery runs out.

But even though we see nothing beyond the faces of a few battle-weary fellow soldiers, the dirt walls of the trench and a few essentials (guns, cigarettes and wet wipes), the film is unexpectedly revealing. Through the curt, calm exchanges across the radio, we get a picture of the geographical layout of the terrain beyond the trench, and of the challenges facing the men caught at the front, with a dwindling supply of bullets and similarly depleted morale. Sentsov, codenamed Grunt, seems to have one of the only fully functioning radios, and relays messages between the troops caught in the eye of the storm of conflict and the ‘higher-ups’, presumably further back and out of harm’s way. Overhead, surveillance drones (Ukrainian) and helicopters (Russian) scope the battlefield, and crackling outbursts of gunfire split open the air above.

The desperate plight of the soldiers at the frontline becomes increasingly clear through the terse radio exchanges and requests for ammunition and backup that never seems to arrive. In another trench, not far away, a commander warns that he is ‘shell-shocked’ and can no longer hear anything. Meanwhile, in the trench alongside Sentsov, the men just about keep a lid on their tension: we see one man’s knee jiggling as the guns rattle just outside the frame, another rolls his eyes despairingly. And for the audience, there’s a growing realisation that the voices we hear are those of men who perhaps did not make it out of this war alive.