These days, most anti-war films are made as loud, self-important blockbusters. The Officers Ward, however, brings the horrors of the battlefield down to a more intimate and affecting level.
In the very first days of World War One, French lieutenant Adrien (Caravaca) suffers terrible facial injuries when a bomb explodes beside him. For the next five years, he languishes in a hospital, enduring countless plastic surgery sessions.
Adrien never fires a shot, but we still get a strong sense of the ongoing war, as more and more soldiers fill the beds around him.
War is mankind at its most monstrous and here are men physically transformed into hideous monsters. To cope with their plight they turn to humour, longing, despair, religion, suicide and yet their bonding reveals a heroism beyond any medal their country could offer.