Breath: 2001, 9m, Beta SP, prod Zonial Pictures, d Ross Turnbull. (Short Takes).

Veteran Toronto film and video artist Ross Turnbull's latest experimental work is a haunting, visually rich exploration of life during wartime. A multi-textured skein of sounds and images of a world in flames and in conflict, Breath follows a woman as she flees through mist-shrouded autumnal forests and meadows from the carnage around her. Throughout Breath there is media imagery drawn from the conflict in the former Yugoslavia juxtaposed with and layered upon arresting images of everyday life. Voices are heard and memories are spoken. (For example, the subdued yet desperate voice of a woman saying that "My children were with me yesterday, I am sure of it.") Somewhere in the whirl of images is a close-up of the eye of a horse, a visual metaphor more terrifying and indicative of the feral madness of war than any in recent memory. While here slightly overwrought and there verging on making despair a little too beautiful, Breath is an impressive, affecting piece of work: compassionate, poetic and timely.

Tom McSorley is the head of the Canadian Film Institute and a contributing editor to Take One.