What we now call Post-Traumatic Stress or PTSD has always been with us, but it has had many other names: In the Civil War, soldiers were said to suffer from ‘soldier’s heart.’ In the First World War, they were sent off the battlefield with ‘shell shock.’ The filmmaker’s own father, Mel, came back from World War II with ‘combat fatigue.’ The trauma of his wartime experiences affected his entire family for years. To explore, and perhaps come to terms with what had happened to him, she accompanies her parents on a return to the beachheads of Normandy, scene of some of the most bitter combat of the twentieth century.

In the midst of this now-tranquil countryside, Mel tries to come to terms with his memories not only of what happened to him and his fellow American soldiers, but of some of the acts they were themselves responsible for. First released to widespread acclaim in 1988, this devastating documentary is even more relevant today.