Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods review – a harrowing vision of hell you will never forget

In this distressingly intimate film, Ukrainian soldiers as young as 19 carry their dying comrades through a freezing forest as the sky turns red with gunfire. Their horror and humanity will never leave you

Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods is a surgically precise, raw and devastating documentary about a seven-week mission undertaken in November 2023 by the Ukrainian Berlingo Battalion. The stakes of the Berlingo’s mission are extremely high. The 99 soldiers must defend a section of a railway line that runs through the forest that lies north-west of Kupyansk. If the Russians were to take it, they would be able to resupply and potentially push on to Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine.

This film does not so much explain the mission as show it in visceral detail. You will see death and dead bodies; these images are unlikely to leave your mind. I have never seen war portrayed in this way, so close up, grotesque and frantic.