A newly released short film shows five veterans of war discussing the act of killing, and the footage is a powerful insight into the effect of war on those who survive.
The film, released by Cut.com, is composed of a series of straight-to-camera interviews, filmed in stark monochrome and presented with no musical soundtrack. Stripping away the politics of the conflicts, it is a poignant collection of testimonies of men who fought in various wars, from Vietnam to the Iraq-Iran war.
There’s little uniformity between the men on certain areas – including the morals of killing in war versus killing in the civilian world – but there is a troubled, even haunted, air as each of the five recounts, in great (sometimes unsettling) detail the moment they first killed another person.
Lonnie, an Infantry soldier who served in the Vietnam War, speaks of the emotions he felt in the moments after killing an enemy soldier.
“Once you realise they’re gone, they’re dead, then what death looks like is nothing. There’s nothing there. There’s a body there, but there’s nothing at all there.
"It goes from a big something to the smallest nothing that there can be. It goes from dreams and aspirations to nothing.”
Watch: On Killing: Veterans
