A teaser trailer has been released for an extraordinary new film, TRAUMA. The film documents the heroism and struggles of a medevac unit in Afghanistan and their lives afterward. The funds are needed to carry the film through the edit process that will transform hundreds of hours of astonishing footage into a powerful new film.
The director of the film is Australian journalist and filmmaker Harry Sanna who was based in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2011, visiting bases in the East and South of the country. In early 2011, Sanna was embedded with the C Company Dustoff, Mountain Division, 3-10 GSAB medevac unit at FOB Shank in Logar Province, Afghanistan. Sanna intensively filmed the time he spent living and flying alongside a Blackhawk medevac platoon, capturing daily life on base and on missions and befriending the medics.
Producer Ryan Cunningham notes, “The film gives the audience an authentic and relentless first-person experience of the medics’ mission – a high-powered mix of adrenaline, dust and heroism.“
In 2014 and 2015, Sanna reconnected with the medics in their hometowns and conducted frank interviews with each of them about their memories and also their success in integrating their experiences with their new jobs and home lives. The result is a candid and often moving portrayal of those individuals that offers insight into the challenges faced by many veterans. For Sanna, the purpose of the film was always, “to breathe some human complexity back into our go-to concept of a veteran.”
“The very different men and women from the medevac missions – from family types to fierce individuals, unwavering cynics, flippant jokers and staunch faithfuls – are now spread right across America from New York to Louisiana, Texas, Idaho, Washington, Alabama, and California. They’re pretty much everywhere. Whether still on military bases or in civilian life, they’ve all forged lives beyond who they were on that helicopter. And yet, they are all still there,” says Sanna.
One viewer responded to an article titled, “This Might Be The Definitive War Doc About Medics in Afghanistan”, on veteran community site “Task & Purpose”, with the following comment:
“It was my platoon. Difficult to watch my friends in this trailer. Like a very private pain that I’m almost sad everybody gets to see. Surreal.”
Says Sanna: “I’ve stopped trying to make a broader, cohesive message out of my experiences there. My hope, with Trauma, is to simply highlight a very small but real aspect of that war, and what it is like now for those individuals.”
Sanna’s producers believe, however, that in staying true to the human details, he has documented an experience that is shared by many veterans.
A current Kickstarter campaign aims to raise $50,000 or more to complete the film and bring it to screens. Most of the money from the Kickstarter will be used to hire an edit team to pull together all the hours of material and shape the film. The costs involved in taking a film from footage to completed movie are significant, so New York based post production company Afterparty VFX has pledged to cover any additional post production costs beyond the money raised by Kickstarter to ensure that the film is completed.
The teaser trailer for the new film is featured on the film’s Kickstarter page and gives an immediate sense of its documentary power, up-close access and frank depiction, attracting pledges of $13,000 within the campaign’s first four days.
The Trauma Kickstarter page states that any funds gained through Kickstarter that exceed the required $50,000 will be used to increase the film’s post-production values.
Producer David Gaddie comments: “Harry has some wonderful ideas to help tell this story in a truly unique and insightful way. Some of those ideas are expensive. We are all very hopeful that our campaign exceeds the target so that Harry can complete his film exactly as he has imagined it.”
The film is due for completion at the end of 2016.
Trauma links:
1. TRAUMA Kickstarter page: www.kickstarter.com
2. TRAUMA Facebook page: www.facebook.com
3. “Task and Purpose” article: bit.ly/1WKTpqQ
