Intercepted

By anonymizing both the callers and the places featured in the documentary, “Intercepted” becomes a sobering portrait of the many millions of lives interrupted by this war.

“Intercepted” is yet another crucial eyewitness document of the Russia-Ukraine war, one that makes the personal stakes painfully vivid.

In little more than an hour and a half, it provides an education into the experience of the continuing atrocity with which only the most detailed journalistic accounts can compete.

The film’s most effective material comes in its analysis of how the military state’s permission structures for inhumanity traumatize citizens in order to harden them and focus their hatred.

At just over 90 minutes, the documentary casts a spell through its minimalist construction, constantly inviting the viewer to scrutinise the phone calls while taking in the aftermath of the destruction meted out by Russian forces.

Intercepted offers a spare psychological portrait of soldiers at war. Gleaned directly from their conversations, this is an honest depiction of how empathy disappears and malice takes over.

It’s a potent concoction of emotion and reality that feels manipulative and sincere, revealing and urgent. Everyone says war is hell, but few movies capture it this directly.

The silence between the calls serves as a space for the horror of them to fully take shape in the viewers’ mind.

The result is synesthesic dissonance, where sound forces you to fill the frame with your own images of life and death.