The war documentary the Marine Corps tried to stop.

Miles Lagoze enlisted at 18 and was sent to Afghanistan as his unit’s Combat Camera, filming the clean, controlled footage used in official military releases. Combat Obscura is made from everything he kept shooting when the cameras were supposed to stop: Marines smoking weed on patrol, firefights collapsing into panic, and young men trying to make sense of a war that barely made sense to them. With no narration or interviews, it feels raw.

At one point, the film cuts from a firefight to the polished CNN report made from Lagoze’s footage. The gap between those two versions is what the whole film is about.

Direct by Miles Lagoza