The Most Unfiltered Documentary You’ll Ever See

Read Time:4 Minute, 23 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Special Operation (Spetsialna Operatsiia)
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Genre: Documentary
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 5m
Director(s): Oleksiy Radynski
Where To Watch: shown at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: Some documentaries take you deep inside a moment in history, but few drop you into the middle with such unfiltered intensity. SPECIAL OPERATION does exactly that, offering an unflinching look at the Russian military's reckless occupation of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant during the early days of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. What sets this film apart is its approach—it doesn’t rely on interviews, dramatizations, or external commentary. Instead, it presents the occupation as captured entirely through the silent, unblinking lens of the facility’s CCTV cameras.

That decision makes for a viewing experience unlike any traditional documentary. No narrator guides the story, there are no carefully edited testimonials, and there are no re-enacted scenes. It’s just raw surveillance footage stitched together to chronicle a military presence in one of the most dangerous locations on Earth. What unfolds is a grim, often absurd portrait of soldiers moving through a radioactive site as if it were any other military base, oblivious—or willfully ignorant—of the unseen threats surrounding them.

The footage itself captures an eerie kind of tension. Russian troops establish checkpoints, move equipment, and interact with Ukrainian staff still stationed at the plant. At times, they seem completely unaware of the invisible dangers that make Chornobyl an active hazard to this day. The banality of their actions—walking through irradiated hallways setting up temporary command posts—starkly contrasts the situation's weight. The result is a film that doesn’t need to manufacture suspense; it’s already baked into every frame.

SPECIAL OPERATION provides an unsettling glimpse into the psychology of occupation. The security cameras offer no close-ups or dramatic zooms, yet the weight of tension is unmistakable. With no soundtrack or narration to shape the emotional core, viewers are left to interpret body language, hesitant interactions, and long, silent moments where nothing seems to happen—but everything feels charged. The lack of editorial interference makes this feel less like a ‘documentary’ and more like examining raw evidence after the fact.

Thematically, the film underscores the recklessness of the Russian invasion by showing, rather than telling, just how ill-conceived the occupation of Chornobyl was. The troops who arrived in the first hours of the war believed they would be there for a matter of days before taking Kyiv, but instead, they were stuck at a site infamous for nuclear disaster, lingering for weeks in conditions that likely jeopardized their health. SPECIAL OPERATION doesn’t have to spell the irony—the footage does it for itself.

While this stripped-down approach is one of the film’s greatest strengths, it also presents a challenge. Some viewers may struggle to grasp the historical or geopolitical significance of what they’re watching without any background commentary or direct explanation. Those unfamiliar with the details of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the lingering dangers of Chornobyl might need additional context.

The film’s impact is undeniable. Removing the usual documentary conventions forces audiences to engage with war not as a spectacle but as an unedited reality. The absence of a dramatic score or structured narrative means the tension isn’t spoon-fed—it builds organically, scene by scene, with no artificial embellishments.

SPECIAL OPERATION is a stark reminder of how easily history can be captured, not by filmmakers, but by security cameras simply doing their job. The film doesn’t editorialize or manipulate—it merely presents the footage and lets the reality speak for itself. That’s what makes it so effective. It’s not a dramatization of war. It’s not a recreation of history. It ‘is’ history, playing out in real-time through the lens of a camera that never blinks.

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[photo courtesy of KINOTRON GROUP, STUDIJA KINEMA, PUBLIC INTEREST JOURNALISM LAB, THE RECKONING PROJECT]

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