Detonation

Detonation (2023) is a Belarusian war drama you can watch online on iFILM. Spring 1945. The front has moved west, but liberated Belarus is still full of unexploded ordnance buried in fields where some of the war's most brutal fighting took place.

OSOAVIAKHIM — the Soviet civil defence organization — recruits teenage volunteers and sends them out to clear the land after barely a week of training. Boys and girls barely out of school, walking terrain where one wrong step means an explosion. Director Ivan Pavlov keeps the camera away from combat and fixed on the aftermath: the unglamorous, terrifying work of demining, handled by the youngest people the organization could find. The cast includes Darya Karpechenkova, Tatyana Fyodorova, and Anzelika Barchan. A steady, honest film about a chapter of the war that rarely makes it to screen. Stream Detonation (2023) online on iFILM.