Full Battle Rattle is the story of a real war and a fake town. In California’s Mojave Desert, the US Army has built a “virtual Iraq” and populated it with hundreds of Iraqi role-players. Army units spend three weeks inside the simulation before deploying to Iraq. The film follows an Army battalion through the simulation, as they attempt to quell an insurgency and prevent the mock village of Medina Wasl from slipping into civil war. Despite the movie-set contrivances, the stakes and the emotions are real. As reality and fantasy overlap, Full Battle Rattle moves from comic to surreal to poignant.

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