Flight of a Bullet (2017)

• 57%
• 2017
• Documentary
• Beata Bashkirova

Shot in one harrowing take, Bubenec's tense handheld dispatch begins at a blown-up bridge in embattled Eastern Ukraine, before detouring into an interrogation at a makeshift base and dissipates into ornery chatter among bored and aggrieved soldiers. Her war-zone film gripped the small crowd with whom I watched it, dropping us in media res at the thoroughly dicey Russian-Ukraine conflict. The whole scenario-which could be plucked wholesale for a fictional thriller-neatly captures the frontier justice at work, but it's also an instant window into how the bloodshed of war pervades life and aggravates and enables male aggression.