Venice Film Festival 2020: Notturno, Dear Comrades, In Between Dying

Seven years after Sacro GRA became the first nonfiction feature to win the Golden Lion, Gianfranco Rosi returned to Venice with Notturno. The opening titles succinctly provide context--three years of footage captured adjacent to ISIS-related warfare in Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon--while the first shot immediately re-establishes Rosi's total ability to sculpt reality: groups of soldiers jogging in laps, separate squads with just enough time between one brigade passing and the next that it'...