Last Men in Aleppo (2017)

This is yet another documentary that has been shortlisted that you can find streaming on Netflix.  It is very painful to watch, so brace yourself.  This is a longer length version of White Helmets, which won best short documentary last year, following the men who rush into bombed buildings to rescue those who might have survived the bombing and to recover the bodies of those who do not.  The city is in ruins, the film does capture that quite graphically, without words needed to describe.  There are people in buildings that have fallen half, trying to recover some of their possessions.  There is soul searching about whether to have the children leave.  There is fear that there really is not good answer, that their Arab neighbors hate them and do nothing to mitigate the hell that they are trapped in.  It is not stunning, it is terrifying and heartbreaking and exhausting.  Essential watching to get a glimpse of a nation being gunned and bombed to pieces.