Natural Light review – reprisals and revenge in chilling examination of the toll of war

Documentary director Denes Nagy explores how conflict erodes loyalty, morality and human consciousness in his award-winning first feature

Hungarian director and documentarist Denes Nagy makes his feature debut with this gruelling, slow-burning drama set in the vast trackless forests of the eastern front during the second world war, a film which won him the Silver Bear for best director at this year's Berlin film festival. This is a world of brutality and fear from which the movie averts its gaze at key moments, but the chill is unmistakable. The title appears to refer to a light which is inexorably fading.

Having joined the Axis powers, Hungary sends troops into the grim, freezing forests of Ukraine to secure the territory, keep order, establish supply lines and root out pockets of pro-Soviet partisans", naturally making an example of them to cow the other resentful civilians into submission. Istvan Semetka, played by Ferenc Szabo, is a corporal with a machine-gun unit on this grim mission: a diffident, blank-faced man with the semi-official job of taking photographs, who is mocked a little by his commanding officers. They move in on a village which is, at least apparently, docile enough. But having taken food from these peasants, the Hungarian unit move on and are set upon in the forest, the villagers having evidently told partisans their movements. Almost all the officers are killed except Semetka, who gets back to the village with the other survivors, to be met by Hungarian reinforcements, led by Koleszar (Laszlo Bajko), a friend of Semetka's. It is Koleszar who, via his insolent sergeant-major, orders Semetka out on a spurious task searching the forest, simply in order to get his gentle old friend out of the way, so that he can get on with the job of carrying out the necessary terrible reprisals.