We live in volatile times, many are quick to point out. But haven’t we always? There’s always a looming conflict on the horizon or one raging in the background, whether or not it receives media attention. Today, media attention can be through traditional news coverage, film and episodic stories, and the modern internet memes.
In 2020, memes poking fun at the possibility of a third world war made their rounds on the internet, highlighting how humour has become a coping mechanism for even the gravest of issues. Fast forward to 2025, and while there’s a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, war is still ongoing between Russia and Ukraine, with many other conflicts, such as the Sudanese civil war, displacing countless people yet remaining largely underreported.
Sundance 2025 captured this enduring and evolving narrative of war through a series of films, each offering a unique lens into its realities, consequences, and absurdities. From satirical takes to deeply personal documentaries, the screenings demonstrated that even in times of conflict, stories remain a vital tool to make sense of our world.
Finding the Funny Side: Atropia and Coexistence, My Ass!
Humour has long been a tool to process pain. Atropia and Coexistence, My Ass! use it to examine the complexities of war and its emotional human cost.
In Atropia, feature debut director Hailey Gates crafts a fictional narrative inspired by real-life military bases like the titular Atropia, a simulated training ground for U.S. soldiers. Originally intended to be a documentary, the project was reshaped into a fictional story after the military restricted access to certain areas. The result is a romantic tale of an actor (Alia Shawkat) and a war returnee role-playing an insurgent (Callum Turner) set in “The Box,” where war scenarios are dramatized to prepare soldiers for real-life combat. Atropia also reflects on the symbiotic relationship between Hollywood and the military-industrial complex. Think of it as a grounded Westworld but with human actors performing the theatre of war. With its sharp wit and layered lead (who’s living an irony in the role-playing facility for self-sustenance and ambition), Atropia doesn’t shy away from addressing how war is both a spectacle and a reality.
On the other hand, Coexistence, My Ass! takes a raw, comedic approach. Noam Shuster Eliassi, an Israeli comedian draws on her upbringing in a settlement, known as the Oasis of Peace (where Israelis and Palestinians coexist), to explore the absurdities of political and social conflict. Part stand-up special, part documentary, the film interweaves interviews with her family, footage from her childhood, and her biting commentary on injustice. In one of her bits, she jokingly draws parallels between her career as a comedian and the trajectory of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who transitioned from playing a fictional president on TV to leading a nation at war. As a comic activist fighting for equal rights for Palestinians and Jews, a once UN diplomat, we are shown the various paths she’s trodden in a bid to peacebuilding.
The documentary, filmed before and during the Gaza escalation, captures the tension between idealism and reality, as the comedian proposes painfully simple solutions to complex problems. Using humour to cut through the tension, Noam Schuster makes her message clear which is peaceful co-relations in the region.
Documenting Realities: 2000 Meters to Andriivka and Khartoum
While humour can soften the edges, some films at Sundance 2025 chose to document the unglazed truth of war.
In Mstyslav Chernov’s 2000 Meters to Andriivka, a frontline documentary about the battle for a strategic village in the Ukraine-Russia war, we are guided by harrowing visuals and unfiltered presence on the battlefield which remind audiences of the devastation that war leaves in its wake, particularly for the troops.
The journey to Andriivka, a mere 2000 metres, should take minutes—two by car, and ten on foot. But for these young Ukrainian soldiers, it stretches into a grueling three-month campaign. Gunfire dominates the air, drowning out dialogue as bodycams and drones place us in the trenches of modern warfare. Through the chaos, the soldiers share fragments of their lives, dreams left behind. Some rise through battlefield promotions; others never leave. It’s war in its rawest form—no green screen, just national pride and survival.
On the other hand, Khartoum (directed by Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Timeea Mohamed Ahmed, Rawia Alhag, Anas Saeed and Phil Cox) chronicles the lives of 5 people in the face of the Sudanese conflict, offering a relatively gentle look at a war that has displaced millions. In this documentary, it is a game of memory and ambitions for 2 young bottle collectors, a resistance committee volunteer, a tea stall owner, and a civil servant. Through them, we see the torn social fabric ignited by the war. The five form a fine subset of the population with their distinct perspectives, simply retelling (and reenacting) their stories.
Khartoum avoids the nitty gritty of the war, stays away from the battlefield, and simply re-paints the human cost of a war that rarely garners international headlines. Ultimately, the documentary is rightfully a celebration of life (despite the war) rather than an examination of destruction caused by the war which is still ongoing.
The War Adjacent: Bubble and Squeak
Then there are fictional films like Evan Twohy’s Bubble and Squeak, which depict the post-war effects rather than war itself. This absurdist comedy imagines a country where cabbages are banned due to their association with wartime hardships—a time when cabbages were a primary food source and, consequently, a painful reminder of survival. In Bubble and Squeak, the focus is largely on the emotional rollercoaster for the potential cabbage-smuggling couple (played by Himesh Patel and Sarah Goldberg) rather than the country itself. But I imagine a deeper back story for the country that has been through the trenches of war.
While the premise is outlandish, the film slyly critiques nations with seemingly arbitrary post-war rules, often drawn from collective trauma. For a humorous film that raises a lot of questions with not too many answers, I find the film more intriguing as a post-war narrative for a nation still recovering. That way, it is a humorous exploration of how societies might cope with the scars of war, turning something as mundane as cabbage into a symbol that anyone who’s been through war can decide what it means to them. It possibly tells us that the people still remember and thus honouring the departed.
The Danger of Forgetting: Entre le Feu et le Clair de Lune
What about those who are in danger of losing crucial memories of war?
American-Ivorian filmmaker Dominic Yarabe addresses this in her hybrid documentary-fiction short film, Entre le Feu et le Clair de Lune (Between The Fire and The Moonlight), which reconstructs memories of war through re-enactments performed by her cousins. It serves as a way of continuing the book her father always wanted to write about his childhood war experience in Cote d’Ivoire that had him in hiding for 10 days.
Drawing inspiration from her father’s lament that “an old person dying is equivalent to a library being burnt,” the documentary states the urgency of documenting stories in cultures where oral histories often overshadow written records. As her father, who has never seen a photograph of his own father, also put it to her once, despite the atrocities in American history, they have it all documented.
By blending personal and collective memory, Yarabe highlights the fragile line between remembrance and erasure, especially in African societies where the past can slip away all too easily.
War Through the Lens of Sundance 2025
Painfully, it’s simple, the comedian in Coexistence, My Ass! says about how to end conflict. But as these films show, it’s anything but. War is multifaceted, leaving scars on those who fight, those who flee, and those who remain.
And these Sundance 2025 films ensure to demonstrate how storytelling can grapple with pain, find meaning in chaos, and even uncover moments of levity.
Become a patron: To support our in-depth and critical coverage—become a Patron today!
Join the conversation: Share your thoughts in the comments section or on our social media accounts.
Track Upcoming Films: Keep track of upcoming films and TV shows on your Google calendar.
