Description

ABSOLUTIONS: War and Moral Injury is an unflinching look at the psychological and spiritual aftermath of war, told with rare intimacy and intensity.

Through the courageous testimony of twenty-three veterans whose service spans the last sixty years of ‘forever wars’, ABSOLUTIONS introduces and illuminates moral injury—the devastating effect that arises when one’s actions, or the actions of others, violate deeply held beliefs about right and wrong.

Their stories are framed by insights from therapists, chaplains, VA researchers and a neuroscientist, without becoming overly ‘educational’—illuminating a kind of trauma that is for the most part misdiagnosed, misunderstood, and left untreated.

ABSOLUTIONS draws viewers into the veterans’ interior landscape through extremely intimate testimonials, moments of ritual and healing, and a visual language shaped by restraint and reflection. The result is a profound and distressing glimpse into the experience of war, about which the civilians who send them there are mostly ignorant. 

At a time when U.S. foreign policy is setting up a new generation of service members for a lifetime of invisible wounds—while the legacy of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan still haunts many of the millions of veterans who served there—this film explores and reveals what happens when war doesn’t end for those who’ve fought it.

For veterans, the film offers recognition, understanding, and pathways toward healing. For families, it provides insight into the harsh and debilitating struggles their loved ones carry. For the broader public, it challenges familiar narratives of war and trauma, expanding the conversation beyond PTSD to include the profound human consequences of conflict.

An average of seventeen veterans a day are killing themselves, according to the VA. ABSOLUTIONS brings their invisible moral injuries into focus—with an urgency to affirm, to inform, and ultimately, to save lives.