Premiering at Karlovy Vary, Oleh Sentsov’s film is composed of 90 minutes accidentally shot by the director’s helmet camera during a Russo-Ukrainian War battle.

Oleh Senstov’s Real is not really a film in the conventional sense. Nor is it really a documentary. It can best be described, as the filmmaker himself puts it in a filmed introduction, as “material.” That’s because the film (for the purposes of this review, let’s call it such) is the result of an accident. It’s composed of 90 minutes of raw, unedited footage captured by a GoPro camera perched on the filmmaker’s helmet while he was serving in the Ukrainian military. Senstov unwittingly turned on the camera after his infantry fighting vehicle was destroyed by Russian artillery, and the footage documents his ensuing efforts to call for help in evacuating his unit even while they’re under fire and running out of ammunition.

Sentsov, who entered the Ukraine military shortly after the Russian invasion, is an experienced director with three feature films to his credit. He’s also an activist and dissident who was charged by Russia with planning terrorist attacks and sentenced to 20 years in prison. A year after receiving the European Parliament‘s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, he was released as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Russia and Ukraine.  

Not that we see any actual action in the film, which mainly shows Senstov — who commanded a unit and whose code name was “Grunt” — and his men hunkered down in a trench in a position known as “Real,” named after the Madrid football club. (The Ukraine military seems to have a particular affinity for the sport, with other positions labeled with the names of such teams as Chelsea, Barcelona and Marseille.)

Since the camera is located on Sentsov’s head, we never really see him. But we do hear his gruff voice barking instructions to his men and into the radio as he serves as a human tripod. Their situation is perilous; as Senstov puts it, they’re “running out of ammo and people,” with several men wounded. They’re surrounded by Russian forces, and their location is periodically shelled as Senstov desperately attempts to arrange their evacuation.  

The soldiers handle their situation with impressive stoicism and resignation, their impassive faces registering little panic as we hear such radio transmissions as “What’s our next move?” and “What’s the leadership saying?” Mostly they wait, and wait, and wait, for the help that’s a long time in coming. “The situation’s shitty. We’ll be coming to you now,” they eventually hear over the radio.