This is not your usual documentary film with resource persons/interviewees and a host or narrator. It's told from a first-person point of view. The actors are the subjects playing as themselves in real time as events unfold.

It captures vividly the stark realities of war that the victims will never forget as long as they live. The wanton destruction is stupefying. And the live video shots make sure that we'll remember the ugliness of war.

The viewer is a witness to the brave, heroic efforts of the White Helmets. The viewer watches them go about their grim business of clearing the rubble caused by barrel bombs, retrieving dead bodies of their fellow holdouts, gathering torn limbs and other body parts. Yet in between the bombings, the people try as much to live a normal life: attending the wedding of a colleague, building an aquarium for pet fish out of an unused water fountain, playing with their kids in the playground while on the lookout for war planes above.

The viewer isn't surprised by the ending. On the contrary, he seems to expect it given that the White Helmets know exactly what they're up against. Still, Batoul's phone messages to his father Khaled Omar Harrah are heart-rending.

The documentary owes its existence to Mahmoud and Khaled but most specially to Khaled.

I felt really bad after watching this documentary... but I suppose that's the whole point of it - to try and awake our sense of humanity and react politically against these atrocities committed against innocent civilians. I hope our politicians in the West are watching this, but I fear they will not do anything to protect these victims of genocide. The documentary shows the brutal reality of what happened and is still happening in Syria.

Ooff....I can't even.

How do you review a movie like "Last Men in Aleppo?" It's about as opposite from entertaining as you're likely to get, yet it should be watched by everybody. It's incredibly urgent, yet it's so lacking in hope that it seems naive to think it will inspire any kind of action or change. It's basically an obituary for a country that hasn't completely died yet, but is certainly dying. And doing so while the world stands back and watches.

Last year, the film that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject was about a member of the White Helmets, a volunteer emergency response group in Syria. He enjoyed 15 minutes of fame when footage of him pulling a living baby from rubble circulated the Internet. That man is now the focus of "Last Men in Aleppo," a film that chronicles his life and eventual death as a member of the White Helmets. Whereas "The White Helmets," in that image of a rescued baby, offered some ounce of hope to cling to, "Last Men in Aleppo" offers nothing but despair. It's the kind of movie that makes it difficult to go about your daily life. The mundane minutiae of being a privileged American -- my biggest annoyance right now is that the motion-sensor light on my garage needs to be replaced -- make me almost embarrassed to enjoy a life of extreme luxury compared to the living conditions of these poor poor people in Syria. That the developed world stood back and watched this conflict happen with a shrug of its collective shoulders will go down in history as one of its most shameful moments.

Grade: A