About IAVA

Films

Since its founding in 2004, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) has sought to further its mission by supporting films that tell the stories of our nation's newest generation of veterans and their families. IAVA has partnered with a wide variety of film projects from documentaries featuring member veterans to narrative features.

Restrepo chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. The documentary focuses on a remote 15-man outpost called Restrepo, named after a platoon medic who was killed in action. Restrepo was considered one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military. Filmmakers Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger dug in with the men of Second Platoon, making a total of ten trips to the Korengal between June 2007 and July 2008. There was no running water at Restrepo, no internet, no phone communication, and for a while, there was no electricity or heat; it was essentially just sandbags and ammo. Some days the outpost was attacked three or four times from distances as close as fifty yards. The filmmakers did everything the soldiers did except pull guard duty and shoot back during firefights. They slept alongside the soldiers, ate with them, survived the boredom and the heat and the cold and the flies with them, went on patrol with them, and eventually came to be considered virtually part of the platoon.This is an entirely experiential film: there are no interviews with generals or diplomats. This is the story, in the soldiers' own words, of a group of men who came be considered the “tip of the spear”.

Over the past five years the Korengal Valley – a rugged valley six miles long near the border with Pakistan – has become an epicenter of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. It was considered to be a crucial relay point for Taliban fighters moving from Pakistan toward Kabul, and several top Al Qaeda leaders were thought to have used it as a base of operations. There was literally no safe place in the Korengal; men have been shot while asleep in their barracks. To date, close to fifty American soldiers have lost their lives there.

IAVA has partnered with Restrepo's distributor, National Geographic, to help encourage the dialogue this film fosters between veterans who have experienced combat and the general public. 

• Watch IAVA Founder and Executive Director Paul Rieckoff interview Restrepo filmmaker Sebastian Junger 

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Interested in exploring a film partnership with IAVA? Click here to submit an application.