Achilles
Absolutions: War and Moral Injury is a feature-length documentary film currently in production about veterans suffering from moral injury and the process of healing.
Moral injury is as great a contributor to the mental health crisis among veterans as PTSD, and the public needs to know about it.
The term ‘moral injury’ describes the distress caused by taking part in, witnessing, failing to prevent, or being subjected to an act that violates one’s fundamental values and moral beliefs.
In war this can result from traumatic experiences such as harming civilians, failing to protect fellow soldiers, the realization that the war itself is unjust, ill-conceived or ineffectively prosecuted, or that service members—in the case of Vietnam—were not well received upon coming home.
In the film, a Vietnam veteran tells of being assigned to retrieve a group of AWOL soldiers living with Vietnamese civilians. When he called for them to come out of a house, they came out shooting. He and his men were forced to shoot back and kill them. It took him fifty years to begin dealing with it and he can’t tell the story without breaking down.
An Afghanistan war veteran served as a drone sensor operator, responsible for surveilling, targeting and launching of Hellfire missiles. He resigned from that position after striking two farmers walking home from a funeral and then watching as a grieving teenage boy picked up and carried away what was left of his father’s body.
Another tells of a buddy who was ordered against standard operating procedure to get out of his armored vehicle and inspect an IED. He and another soldier were blown up. The veteran blames careerism for that and other improper orders.
An Iraq war veteran is plagued by shooting a child.
Many other veterans’ stories are interwoven throughout the film.
Absolutions explores survivors’ guilt, military sexual trauma, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and abandonment of Afghan comrades, and other related themes.
Moral injury causes profound disruptions in psychological, behavioral, social, and spiritual functioning as well as a loss of identity, a sense of right and wrong, and a loss of trust in others. The morally injured can feel profoundly cut off from loved ones, society and humanity at large.
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—or simply, PTS) has over the last few decades become well understood and recognized by the medical community, the VA, veterans and the general public. PTS is a neurological condition, affecting the regions of the brain responsible for fear responses and resulting in flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance and severe anxiety, as well as intrusive thoughts about the triggering event. Untreated, PTS can last a lifetime and wreak havoc on veterans and their families.
But many veterans diagnosed with PTS may actually be suffering from moral injury, or a combination of the two. Each of these conditions requires a different approach to treatment, and treatments intended to help with PTS can make a moral injury condition worse, or turn a veteran off from therapy. Both can lead to substance abuse and suicide. Last year, at least 17 veterans killed themselves every single day. But including early deaths from substance abuse and self-destructive behavior, that number is much larger.
Absolutions features interactions between veterans and caregivers—one-on-one and in groups—as they work to lessen the burden of their condition. From nurses to therapists to practitioners of Native American rituals, somatic body work and chaplains as well as veteran support groups, writing and art workshops and hospice workers, the film depicts a variety of approaches to healing. The film also includes interviews with scholars, religious figures and neuroscientists.
But this is not a conventional ‘educational’ film. Its approach and style reflect the deep, internal nature of moral injury through gripping personal testimony, intimate conversations, rituals and other paths to healing. Interwoven with these, veterans’ poetry and art and stylized footage of combat and training, Veterans Day parades and vignettes at The Wall will be artistically employed.
Ancient Greek literature and mythology, religious texts and philosophical treatises offer another level of insight into the film’s timeless themes. Spare and delicate original music provides a subtle underscore without signaling to viewers how to feel. Absolutions is intended to be a unique work of cinematic art that will attract attention, create buzz, likely stir controversy, premiere in prestigious film festivals, be released on a major streaming service, and reach a wide public audience.
The three central themes of Absolutions are:
What war is actually like and how it causes moral injuries
What moral injury feels like and what it does to veterans
How healing can happen — through a variety of approaches
Absolutions will bring broad awareness to an urgent issue and spur the medical and therapeutic communities, thought leaders and policy makers to a new level of engagement in the urgent need for healing broken warriors. Suffering veterans and their families will realize that they are not alone and discover paths to healing. The lessons learned in the film are equally applicable to first responders, healthcare workers and police officers, all of whom are vulnerable. Absolutions is intended to save lives.
photo: Richard Trammell
Scott Sinkler is an Emmy award-winning producer/director and director of photography with more than thirty years of experience.
He served as director of photography for Netflix’ 5-part series Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror and Katie Couric’s Fed Up, as well as PBS’s Ice Warriors and series such as Wide Angle, The Tony Awards, Egg: The Arts Show, WNET’s City Arts & City Life, and Bloomberg Television’s series Muse, Game Changers, Risk Takers and Innovators. He spent six weeks in Vietnam, and contributed to the film The People Vs. Agent Orange.
His most recent effort is as co-producer and director of photography of Anxiety Club, about comedians with anxiety disorders, which has been selected to premiere in November 2024 at a major film festival.
In the 1980s Sinkler produced and directed the documentary Inside Life Outside, which chronicled the lives of a group of homeless people living in a shantytown on New York’s Lower East Side over two and a half years. That film was selected for the Whitney Biennial and is currently in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. His films have won many awards at international film festivals, and have aired on US and foreign TV networks.
Sinkler has produced and directed arts programs, corporate media, as well as commercials and promotional materials for Broadway shows, including Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Movin’ Out, Thou Shalt Not, Gypsy, and the Tony Award-winning Contact.
He has written for books and magazines on documentary filmmaking and periodically gives a master class in documentary camerawork at New York University.