Documentarian Matthew Heineman’s sixth documentary feature, “Retrograde,” arrives on streaming services this week, hitting Disney+ on Friday and Hulu on Sunday. The film is stunning, visceral and startlingly immersive look at the United States’ chaotic and tragic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The filmmakers, who start out embedded with the Green Berets, end up following Afghan General Sami Sadat after the U.S. forces depart the country, while Sadat attempts to hold things together almost single-handedly. Heineman and his team also capture the heartrending scene at the Kabul Airport, as Afghan citizens attempted to flee the country after the Taliban took control, filming just a day before a suicide bomber killed hundreds there.
“Retrograde” is a film that demands our attention, reckoning with the 20 long years that the U.S. spent fighting in Afghanistan, and depicting the botched withdrawal that left the country under the tyrannical rule of the Taliban, while always placing the human toll front and center. It’s one of Heineman’s bravest and boldest works yet, which is remarkable, considering the harrowing films that make up the oeuvre of the young documentarian thus far.
Earlier this fall, Heineman picked up three Emmys for his 2021 documentary “The First Wave,” which put cameras, and viewers, directly into a New York hospital during the height of the COVID-19 onslaught in the spring of 2020. With keen observation, “The First Wave” is a time capsule of that recent history which impacted us forever, and it’s an important reminder of the grave realities of COVID-19. Stream it on Hulu.
