I found this documentary hard going. If I’d seen it at the start of the festival and less tired, I might have been awed by the technique of overlapping footage with disconnected but meaningful audio.

After Occupied City, this seems less fresh but the contemporary nature of its lens and the awful reality of its audio makes it seem much more profound.

Over a few months in 2022, Ukrainian Secret Service intercepted and recorded phone conversations between Russian soldiers and their loved ones. The footage we see is almost silent scenes of a devastated Ukraine. Bombed buildings, abandoned homes, rooms filled with debris. Sporadically, we hear conversations, at first mild – sons chiding their mothers, mother’s asking if they are eating – but they gradually become darker and darker.

There are detailed descriptions of torture (putting images in my mind that I wish were not there), repetitive rationalisations for shooting every civilian they meet, even children. There are multiple homophobic slurs and a repeated belief that these ‘Kholkhols’ are not human or deserving of anything. They have been told the cause of the war is to destroy Nazism and only a few question this or their purpose for being there.

One man confides to his mother that he loves torturing and she admits that she would too, given the chance. It’s chilling. I had to leave before the ending to catch my next film and I felt some relief in escaping.