The Damned

With this thoughtful twist on the jingoistic, action-packed war movie, Cannes Un Certain Regard Best Director winner Roberto Minervini asks: what’s it all for?

Faith, hope and purpose are tested to the extreme as a platoon of unnamed Union soldiers patrol the unclaimed western line in 1862, at the height of the Civil War. Hailing from various backgrounds and communities, the men are united by their belief in God, country and one another – even as their supplies deplete and the winter sets in. But this trust slowly wavers as they face a dispiriting conflict that seemingly has no end nor resolution.

With echoes of Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff and Alex Garland’s Civil War, the latest feature from Minervini (What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?, MIFF 2019) builds on his previous work’s ingenious observations of American life and the tensions between duty and agency, present and past. Again blurring dramatic and documentary modes, and working here with Carlos Alfonso Corral on the sublime wide-screen cinematography, the Italian-born, US-based filmmaker has crafted a gripping wartime saga with all-too-real echoes of the bitterly divided USA of today.

“If it were possible to send a camera crew back into the past to capture such an event, the result would be something close to what Minervini delivers in this quietly intoxicating and existentially real war movie.” – Hollywood Reporter