18, 91mins

Flanders is the most potent antidote to a Bruce Willis myth that you could possibly inject. Bruno Dumont’s account of three French lads from rural villages who sign up for war won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2006.

It’s an extraordinary and raw piece of work. There is scant dialogue. There is no obvious centre. The film leans over farmyard gates as carelessly as it does the desert trenches of North Africa and Afghanistan. The intensity is almost unbearable.

Yet this film is also a parable about rural France, shot with so much realism that it bleeds. The girlfriends are underage, unfussy and keen to mate in the mud. But the emotion and cost is an elusive thing. There are brilliant performances by Adélaïde Leroux and Samuel Boidin. The latter makes stupidity look like a blessing. The young men who long for war are brutalised beyond belief. The Spartan savagery of the story makes words superfluous. These are soldiers (boys) who are, as often as not, killed by children. They rape and murder without thinking. They are captured and brutalised in kind. These performances, by amateur actors, are far beyond humbling.

Dumont is one of those rare directors who knows what it means to shoot the unspeakable truth. God knows, but we should be grateful. But God should also know about the shame.

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