Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there was the war in Donbas. French journalist Loup Bureau captures life on the front lines of the armed conflict in Donbas, Ukraine, which started in 2014… and still rages on. Bureau spent months with Ukrainian soldiers in the muddy trenches as they fought both Russian soldiers and the tedium of war.

The battles in the Donbas region of Ukraine between Ukrainian soldiers and Russian separatists have been raging for eight years. Loup Bureau, a former Cairo-based correspondent for French television, decided that the best way to capture the war was through the medium of documentary film. Shooting in black-and-white, he embeds himself with a group of soldiers who fight and endure and try to stay sharp in a seemingly endless conflict that constantly vacillates between boredom and terror. They spend their time with various forms of housekeeping in their makeshift tents, care for stray cats, smoke, play video games… and fire their weapons against the enemy, seen and unseen. And when it is over, how will they adjust to “normal” life?