Leaving no stone unturned in their efforts to make the Middle East safe for democracy, the US government has constructed a vast simulacrum of Iraq in the Californian desert, where soldiers train against ‘insurgents’ prior to deployment in the ‘real’ theater of war. This faux Iraq comes replete with actual Iraqis playing, uh, Iraqis, while veterans of the ‘real’ war take on the part of the ‘turrorists’. The entire production has a budget of $1 billion plus – dwarfing anything Cecil B. DeMille or even David Lean could ever dream of.

Filmmakers Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss somehow managed to secure permission to document one of these exercises, and seem as surprised as anyone as events unfold, and it becomes clear that even in a controlled meta-environment like this, the ‘good guys’ are fighting an unwinnable war. Truth remains stranger than fiction, but it can be instructive – and this documentary is probably about as spectacularly surreal as the real thing.

Sindre Kartvedt