The scars of warfare can never be erased. Battles traverses landscapes, physical and psychic, that are inscribed with the traces of war. Shot in four locations and divided into four chapters, director Isabelle Tollenaere’s film leads us on a visually rich and auditorily arresting exploration, a kind of 21st-century, post-military tourism. We encounter a bomb in Belgium, a soldier in Latvia, a bunker in Albania, a tank in Russia. Men methodically detonate unexploded shells from the Great War. Tourists act the part of prisoners, while locals portray camp guards, complete with an English translator. A family reclaims a bunker for a cowshed. Women sew together a battery of inflatable artillery. Each chapter reveals the sometimes bizarre, and just as often mundane, aftereffects of demilitarization. Very little dialogue intrudes on the crisp composition and vivid sound design of this clever, contemplative work. As the philosopher Martin Heidegger says, “When the combat ceases, that which is does not disappear, but the world turns away.”  DP