The Damned.The Damned (2024) is director Roberto Minervini’s first fiction film, but like each of the Italian filmmaker’s previous five features, which seamlessly integrated dramatized elements into otherwise observational frameworks, it feels plainspoken and intimate, as if torn from the fabric of reality. What’s remarkable is that Minervini has achieved this not by telling a contemporary story or reimagining a recent event, but by returning to the past. Set in 1862, The Damned is an American Civil War drama that unfolds like a documentary, a full-fledged period piece that speaks to modern-day issues without betraying the integrity of its setting.An opening title card sets the scene: In the dead of winter, the Union army has sent a company of volunteer soldiers to the western territories to patrol the region’s unchartered borderlands. Preceded by an image of wolves devouring a deer carcass, it’s an introduction that...