A group of French soldiers stationed in Afghanistan are going through routine watch missions late at night, when suddenly members start vanishing from thin air. Captain Bonassieu (Jérémie Renier) is at a loss for where his mean can be, placing the blame on the local residents of the Afghan area (near the Pakistan border), and then even on some of his own men.
Through further investigations, they discover that all the men are disappearing when falling asleep on the ground. When they bring this up to local residents, they believe that the men are taken away by religious forces that don’t appreciate them sleeping on holy ground.
Captain Bonassieu doesn’t know where to turn, as he knows tactical warefare, not one with a force of nature, or possibly of supernatural or god-like powers. When they come across the Taliban and blame them for taking their men, they’re stunned to learn that the Taliban are also looking for their own men who disappeared, and thought they were the cause. In an surprising turn of events, both sides are forced to come together and try to figure out what exactly is happening.
The soldiers are feeling an existential crisis as is, unaware of the true meaning of their placement in Afghanistan, and then there’s the larger existential crisis of why they’re on this earth to begin with, and why men are beginning to vanish out of thin air.
Cogitore lets it all play out with a hushed but tense sensibilities, letting our mind do most of the work for us, similar to what the onscreen characters are going through. He places us directly into the frame of thought with techniques such as using night vision to quite literally place us into their worldview.
As expected, Cogitore doesn’t have any interest in giving us the answer as to what happened to these men or solving the mysteries that arise, but it feels all the more satisfying to try and figure it all out on our own and figure out what exactly it all means.
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