When Emma turns twenty, she decides to join the army. Not only does she want to follow in her father’s footsteps, but she also yearns to rid herself of an oppressive sense of existential emptiness. In the army’s environment of harsh discipline, she submits to its repressive rules, but these cannot suppress the feelings she has towards Sergeant Richard. In Nicolas Roy’s directorial debut, the military becomes the stage for his characters’ inner struggles as they reach the limits of their values and standards. They are opposites, but perhaps that is why they cannot exist without one another. Roy’s focus on nonverbal communication, combined with the expressive acting of Éléonore Loiselle and David La Haye, adds to the evocative power of Wars, making it an almost hypnotically concentrated spectacle.