When four Australian soldiers capture a young Afghani boy spying on their position, tensions rise among them as they deicide whether he’s helping the Taliban or simply playing

ENTRENCHED is a short film that explores the challenging question of morals and ethics, and whether it’s okay to kill a child during wartime. Touching on racial prejudices, it is a short and concise story that delivers a powerful message relevant in today’s social climate.

I’ve always been intrigued by the various situations soldiers face during war time. Their reality is always heightened, their stakes are real and their urgency extreme. It is literally life or death. At the core of man, whether we’ve been indoctrinated into a military force or not, we each have our own moral frame. To me, this creates a thin and complex line between a soldier’s training and their personal values. And it is this fundamental element that inspired me to write Entrenched.

The short film Entrenched is a proof of concept for a feature film of the same premise. Director Joseph Chebatte hopes he can go deeper into exploring the characters and situation with a feature length film. The short was shot with a Sony F55 and vintage KOWA Anamorphic lenses.

While these lenses are often used to add a cinematic feel to a story, they also intensify the sense of a ‘different world’ vibe. Shooting Entrenched on these lenses was important to add to the scope of a war zone, a world far from public conception