I love found footage films. But even more than that, I love stolen footage films - films made with footage you were never supposed to see, footage meant to be locked away, censored, destroyed.

Miles Lagoze enlisted in the US Marine Corps at the age of 18. Soon after, he was sent to Afghanistan and became an official military videographer, tasked with creating promotional videos for his unit. Long after he called "cut," Lagoze kept rolling. After discharge, he snuck this footage home and created this phenomenal and appalling film, a raw and often difficult-to-watch look at life in a war zone. It highlights wartime injustices, peeks behind the scenes into the behavior of soldiers on the ground, shows the consequences for the local Afghan communities under American occupation, and rebukes the notion of war in its entirety. Needless to say, this is not the promotional video the Marine Corps wants you to see. It's a legal and logistical wonder this film ever got released, but thankfully it did.