“In the Rearview” is a unique glimpse at the effects of war on everyday people.

The documentary follows several families and groups of people as they flee Ukraine by car, through volunteer transportation.

This is a unique documentary in that there is no voiceover or commentator directing the viewers or stirring the emotions in a specific way.

Instead, you simply watch these different groups of people on their journeys grappling with a wide array of emotion. Whether they’re expressing grief, relief, sadness or joy, the intimate world built by filmmaker Maciek Hamela, who is also the volunteer car driver, is a stunning thing to behold.

Sometimes the passengers are silent, sometimes they have a lot to say, on topics from the family cow to the horrors they’ve seen perpetrated by Russia and its troops in Ukraine.

In addition to the narratives, we also get to see how the war has destroyed buildings, roads and other structures in real time. One of the most memorable sequences is when they have to reroute because a bridge has been blown up, followed by a radio report indicating that Russia went on a campaign to target any exits from Ukraine.

“In the Rearview” does avoid narration, but it smartly infuses news reports as necessary to give some context to the timing and situations the driver and passengers are in.

This simple storytelling structure and the editing done to heighten it are something I would like to see in more documentaries. No trying to steer the narrative (pun intended), just taking what people say or don’t say and stringing it together to tell a compelling story.

I would like to see this type of storytelling used to tell the real stories of more people around the world affected by war and genocide.

Rating: 4/5