Ashes to Ashes

The scouts

Everyone expects a trauma documentary to be cathartic or rage-filled, so watching Rembert let his hands do the speaking through leather instead of words is refreshingly oblique—but honestly, the premise still lands where you'd expect it to, and that bores me a little.

Rees understands the weight of restraint: the decision to let craft and material language carry testimony rather than voice-over or performance creates a formal dialogue with the long lineage of artist-as-witness work, positioning leatherwork as both archive and aesthetic argument.

The film's entire moral architecture pivots on a single choice—letting Rembert's hands and the texture of leather become the primary narrator instead of his voice—and that decision transforms what could've been a conventional survivor's story into something tactile and genuinely earned.