Preview Screening: Full Battle Rattle

Full Battle Rattle is the story of a real war and a fake town. In California’s Mojave Desert, the US Army has built a ‘virtual Iraq’ – a billion dollar urban warfare simulation – and populated it with  hundreds of Iraqi role-players. Army units spend three weeks inside the simulation before deploying to Iraq.

Blurring the boundary between fact and fiction, horrific and hilarious, Full Battle Rattle follows an Army Battalion through the simulation, as they attempt to quell an insurgency and prevent Medina Wasl, a mock Iraqi village, from slipping into civil war.

Through intimate stories of Iraqi exiles fleeing the war (and now ‘playing’ it) and US soldiers heading into it, this documentary provides a revelatory look at the soul of the US war machine, and, in the battle for Medina Wasl, finds a potent allegory of the Iraq war and the cultural and religious differences that confound America’s efforts.

See the film’s trailer here: http://www.fullbattlerattlemovie.com/

“Utterly Stunning…it would be a sublime satire if it wasn’t horribly true!” – The Times

USA
Directors: Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss
Length: 85 mins