The documentary “Restrepo” uses the hand-held camera technique we so often see in fictional war films, but here the soldiers we follow are real and so is the danger they face, terrifyingly so.

Writer/journalist Sebastian Junger, who penned the non-fiction bestseller “The Perfect Storm,” and cameraman/photojournalist Tim Hetherington are embedded with a unit on its way to Afghanistan. When plans were made, the Second Platoon’s destination was expected to be a safe, backwater location far from action. Instead, the Korengal valley became one of the war’s hottest spots.

The Second Platoon is tasked with building an outpost on high ground, a spot with a commanding view of the valley, despite constant enemy fire. They name the outpost for a charismatic platoon medic who was killed in the first days in country.

A documentary with searing emotional immediacy, “Restrepo” takes us into the Afghanistan war through the eyes of soldiers on the ground. The film is non-political, has no structuring view, just events unfolding as they do for these soldiers. “Restrepo” was a winner at the Sundance Film Festival and a hotly sought-after ticket when it played the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Mo., earlier this year.

Through the documentary, the audience lives with these young men. Viewers see them at their best and their worst, happy and silly as they kid around, scared or enraged in the heat of a fire fight. Junger and Hetherington lived side by side with the unit for a year, as the soldiers built an outpost and defended it, endured boredom and lost comrades, and waited for their time to be up.

The strength of “Restrepo” is that it has no agenda and no filter. It is only the soldiers’ experiences. The soldiers talk frankly in studio interviews sprinkled in with the immediate war footage. No experts offer analysis and no generals are interviewed. What we get is the inescapable, day-by-day reality of the soldiers’ war. The point is to give the viewer the feeling of being there, bored or terrified.

Scenes of the soldiers playing jokes and dancing around are sometimes suddenly interrupted by gunfire. Attempts to build bridges with local leaders are undermined by misunderstandings and friendly-fire accidents. Tension is thick as any ordinary walk can turn into a battle, and the audience is carried along as the filmmakers are, as the soldiers are, into who knows what around the next rock.

“Restrepo” is unblinking in its honesty, heart-breaking and terrifying in its reality. This documentary is likely to be among the year’s top contenders for awards, but more than that, it is a must-see film to get a sense of what those fighting that far-off war must endure.

“Restrepo” opened August 13 for an exclusive run at the Tivoli Theater.