Response

Emma asks:
If someone gave you all the equipment and all the help to you needed to make a documentary on the Iraq War, what would be the main focus of your documentary? And how would you execute it?

Actually, I just had to write a review for work about the new HBO documentary film Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery. The filmmakers focused on the mourning families and the rituals and strength they developed in their mourning process. Section 60 is where the killed soldiers from the Iraq war are buried and is called "the saddest acre in America". The filmmakers also veered from the political influences about the war and focused more on the aftershocks of coping with a lost one that died serving the war. In one of the screenings, a mother who had lost her son stood up after the film had been shown and cried out "Welcome to our world". That's intense.

My documentary would focus on an emotional snapshot of what someone has to endure when mourning and coping with a loved one's death. Especially after sending a son, husband, lover, brother, cousin off to a war. Having someone you love gone for months, years even, and then having them return home in a coffin? How do you transition? What emotions are involved? I would want to feel their pain and know their struggle.