There is genuine horror in this eyewitness documentary about Vladimir Putin’s attack on the southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol; I spent many moments of it with my head in my hands. The brutal siege lasted from February to May 2022; civilian centres were targeted and more than 20,000 people killed. The Ukrainian Associated Press journalist and film-maker Mstyslav Chernov was there for 20 days, and filed video reports that helped to galvanise western opinion, particularly the horrific images of mass graves. But this movie is the uncut, unexpurgated version: the real nightmare, the real explicit obscenity which no TV executive would put on the nightly news.
Chernov shows the dead bodies of men, women, children and babies. But perhaps even more horribly, he shows us, in unthinkable closeup, the wrenching anguish of those left behind, sobbing over the shattered bodies of their loved ones. It really is not to be borne.
