Aftermath: The Remnants of War
2001 · 56m · Canada
Directed by Daniel Sekulich
Genres: documentary, war
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
De-miners, psychologists, and doctors confront war's residue in Russia, France, Bosnia, and Vietnam. Contamination and trauma persist long after fighting ends.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a respectable doc about war's aftermath, sure, but it plays it straight—four countries, three professions, melancholy tone—exactly what you'd expect from the premise. Where's the formal risk that makes you question what a war film can even be?
Sekulich assembles a quietly rigorous meditation on trauma's geography, letting de-miners, psychologists, and doctors speak across borders without false equivalence; the restraint in not dramatizing their testimony is itself a formal argument about how we witness aftermath.
The film's real move is letting silence and the repetitive, almost liturgical work of de-mining carry the weight instead of layering in score—one choice that transforms what could've been a sympathy piece into something genuinely unsettling.