“The chaos of war has rarely, if ever, been depicted with this much intimacy”
“The stunning film, directed by Jamie Roberts, and much of it shot via bodycam, brought home the immediate reality of frontline combat that a thousand hours of news reports on strategic pushes, mortar attacks and casualty lists can never quite convey. This was war in the raw: terrifying life-and-death combat one minute, bored bickering the next.”
Ben Dowell, The Times
“This film does not so much explain the mission as show it in visceral detail. You will see death and dead bodies; these images are unlikely to leave your mind. I have never seen war portrayed in this way, so close up, grotesque and frantic. To hear the rapid, panicked breathing of these men – to hear the adrenaline and the fear – is so utterly intimate, direct and powerful. It is deeply disturbing. And it should be.”
Rebecca Nicholson, The Guardian
“The pity of modern warfare is here in the raw. It’s the horror tropes of Vietnam but below zero. Bodycams issued by director Jamie Roberts capture it all: what it’s like to be hunted by a drone; to move through wintry woods with no sight of the nearby enemy; to shoot and be shot at in the blindness of night; to come upon the bodies of comrades in a dugout.”
Jasper Rees, The Telegraph
“Much of film-maker Jamie Roberts’s shocking, gripping documentary was shot from the air. When we weren’t watching from the skies, we were with the men on the ground, looking up and scanning for machines buzzing like deadly insects. Nothing more graphic has been screened on television than this.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail
“The longer the war in Ukraine continues, the easier it has become for it to feel abstract, with the initial horror at seeing such devastating conflict in Europe growing normalised. The deeply immersive BBC2 documentary Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods was a sharp reminder that it mustn’t be, as it brought home the frontline reality with a close-up, visceral thump. The chaos of war has rarely, if ever, been depicted with this much intimacy.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i
Grand Indian Hotel, Channel 4
“A wag once joked that all TV producers yearn to pitch a series called Great Hotels of the World. This is that show. Though not at all hard-hitting, and loftily sealed off from the realities of over-population and poverty, it has just enough to say about modern India not to look like mere branded content.”
Jasper Rees, The Telegraph
No comments yet