Like SMITH’s webcomic Shooting War*, the short video Men in Black takes war’s reality and rethinks it into a fictional, fantastical representation of what one person saw. In MIB’s case, director Richard Robbins has turned Colby Buzzell’s story of an ambush in Mosul into a four-minute animated video.

Very Short List writes: “Men in Black could be an excerpt from Sin City, with its hard-boiled, sensitive-guy voice-over and staccato visual style. But the fact that this particular combat event actually happened—and that similar events are happening every day—makes the existential terror of the Iraq war immediate.” Click here.

The War In Iraq: A Soldiers Perspective - Watch more free videos

*That’s a sneak peak at Shooting War, the book, the incredible creation of Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman, out this fall.