Young Alisa Kovalenko’s raw, deeply personal work starts out as a document of the war in Ukraine but ends up asking big questions about the role of the nonfiction director and whether objective journalism is ever possible. At first, Alisa in Warland gives us a first-person look at the riots that erupt on Kiev’s streets. Then, embedding themselves with the ragtag crew of Right Sector nationalist fighters on the eastern front, Kovalenko and codirector Luibov Durakova capture the chaos of war in rough handheld footage: hiding out from snipers and mortars, peeling potatoes in dimly lit rooms, and driving through burning villages.

It’s a rare, perhaps fittingly disorienting look inside the frontlines of an ugly civil war. But the movie is really more about Kovalenko—and, depending on how you feel about the candid, likable filmmaker turned protagonist, this can be a good or bad thing. The most interesting effect of the film is the way we start to empathize with the fighters as much as she does. These big tough guys fuss over their sole female companion, making sure she’s protected and laughing when they teach her to shoot guns.

But in the outside world, the men are considered ultra-right-wing paramilitaries, and no matter how noble their fight against Russian-backed separatists, her French boyfriend, family, and other Kiev pals take Kovalenko to task for holing up with them and putting her life in danger. As she shifts from filmmaker to armed fighter, you may find yourself struggling with ambivalence: is she seduced by the cause, is she a righteous fighter, or is she just a victim of youthful idealism?