The first significant indie hit of 2024, Alex Garland’s “Civil War,” was a disturbing film to drop during an election year. Writer-director Garland (“Ex Machina,” “Annihilation”) created a hellscape with echoes of conflicts in places like Ukraine, but also one that nodded to the ugly divisions of January 6 and escalated them into a harrowing portrait of an angry America at war with itself.
“When we started rehearsal, the war in Ukraine broke out,” said Kirsten Dunst, who stars in the film as conflict photographer Lee Smith. “We were watching journalists under fire, we were watching maternity wards being bombed. It was always around us.”