Academy Award-nominated director Gianfranco Rosi (Fire at Sea) delivers another richly cinematic documentary with Notturno, and this time we’re transported to the heart of the Middle East where communities are still reeling from past and future wartime chaos.

Rosi and his crew shot Notturno–Italy’s official Oscar entry for Best International Feature–over the last three years along the borders of Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, and Lebanon. The beauty in the mundane, the heartache of reality, and the perseverance in the face of an unknown future are at the heart of this film, which lends itself to be a heavy, but highly-rewarding, watch.

The opening shot shows small groups of men running laps around a track at what looks like dawn. The image is jaw-dropping, beautiful in its simple composure. It feels eerily reminiscent of Claire Denis’s Beau Travail or Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan where the camera is steady and the subjects that run in and out of frame provide the spontaneous artistic direction. The rest of the film follows suit, where long takes create drawn-out scenes that give the audience the sense of being there too.

… [It] makes me want to reach through the TV screen and give them all a big, tight hug.

In one of the more devastating scenes, we observe a child therapist asking different children to express, through drawings, their various experiences under ISIS control. Listening to these innocent children describe beheadings, watching people get burned alive, and sharing that they still cry when they think about those moments makes me want to reach through the TV screen and give them all a big, tight hug.

Notturno gives a face and a voice to the human struggle in the Middle East. For as much as we might want to look away and not face the sick reality of violence and hardship, it is our duty as brothers and sisters of the world, and fellow humans, to acknowledge these tragedies. Watching this film and becoming aware of their daily struggles is a great first step.

Distributed by The Match Factory, available in select virtual theaters this Friday, January 22, 2021, and on Hulu January 29, 2021.