The Not Dead

Since 2003, the number of British servicemen that have returned home from a war zone with post-traumatic stress disorder has risen to 2,000. Once they get back home, they usually slip into a depression. As 23-year-old Rob, who recently returned from Iraq, puts it, "We were prepared to go into the war, but we were not prepared to come out." Incorporating the stories of three different men from two generations, describes how war experiences can cause serious and permanent mental anguish. Besides Rob, Eddie, who served in Bosnia, and Cliff, who returned from Malaysia a broken man in 1951, provide insight into what post-traumatic stress disorder really means. In candid interviews, they are prepared to relive their toughest moments during and after the wars they served in. Director Brian Hill films the men in an unembellished manner, intentionally placing them against the backdrop of archive footage and their current everyday reality, which they still seem isolated from. Poet Simon Armitage wrote a series of poems based on their deeply emotional accounts, and the men recite them as they look straight into the camera. In the process, these revisited nightmarish experiences intensify their history, rendering it universal.