Hell and Back Again

UPDATE
Film about area Marine gets Academy nod
January 25, 2012 7:06 AM
HOPE HODGE - DAILY NEWS STAFF
A feature documentary about a Camp Lejeune Marine returning wounded from war was nominated for an Academy Award on Tuesday.

“Hell and Back Again,” directed by filmmaker Danfung Dennis, follows 26-year-old Marine Sgt. Nathan Harris as he deploys to Afghanistan in 2009 with Camp Lejeune’s Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines; sustains combat wounds; and returns to Jacksonville to recover and rebuild his life.

Dennis traveled with the unit as an embedded reporter during the deployment, observing firefights and missions from outside the wire. After Harris’ deployment was cut short by a machine gun bullet that tore through his midthigh and up to the center of his back, Dennis obtained permission to spend extended time with the Marine and his wife, Ashley, as they readjusted to life back home.

Harris told The Daily News when the film premiered last October that Dennis had become a part of the couple’s day-to-day life as a background presence for months, observing doctors’ appointments, rehabilitation and, at times, the tension and imbalance caused by combat wounds and post-traumatic stress.

Dennis told The Daily News Tuesday that his film was intended not to communicate a specific message, but to acquaint Americans with the unvarnished realities of war.

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**2012 ACADEMY AWARD®-NOMINATED DOCUMENTARY**

HELL AND BACK AGAIN– Releasing on Cable VOD, Digital, Blu-ray and DVD. An unprecedented exploration of the moving image and a film of uncommon intimacy, Danfung Dennis’s critically acclaimed, award-winning documentary, HELL AND BACK AGAIN, comes full circle as it lays bare the true cost of war. HELL AND BACK AGAIN premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and won Grand Jury and Cinematography prizes. The film premiered theatrically in October 2011 and continues to tour nationwide. HELL AND BACK AGAIN was nominated for Film Independent’s “Truer Than Fiction” Spirit Award and a Gotham Award for Best Documentary. Nominated for four Cinema Eye Awards, the film won Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography. Danfung Dennis is the recipient of International Documentary Association’s Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Filmmaker Award and the prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. (Docurama Films).

"A tour de force...HELL AND BACK AGAIN stacks one astonishing shot atop the next: perfectly composed tracking sequences in the heat of battle; saturated moody low-light compositions in rainy North Carolina parking lots; gorgeous rich soundscapes." - The New York Times

"An astonishing technical achievement in war journalism and documentary filmmaking that may very possibly change the way conflicts are reported forever.” – CNN

Top 10 Films of 2011 - Associated Press, NPR Fresh Air, New York

2012 ACADEMY AWARD®-NOMINATED DOCUMENTARY, “HELL AND BACK AGAIN,” RELEASES TODAY ON CABLE VOD, BLU-RAY, DVD AND DIGITAL

Winner of 2011 Sundance Film Festival Prizes; IDA Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Filmmaker Award

In 2009, U.S. Marines launched a major helicopter assault on a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan. Within hours of being dropped deep behind enemy lines, 25-year-old Sergeant Nathan Harris’s unit (US Marines Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment) is attacked from all sides. Cut off and surrounded, the Marines fight a ghostlike enemy and experience immense hostility from displaced villagers caught in the middle.

Director Danfung Dennis, embedded as a photojournalist in Echo Company during the assault, captures the frontline action with visceral immediacy. When Sergeant Harris returns home to North Carolina after a life-threatening injury in battle, HELL AND BACK AGAIN evolves from a war exposé to the story of one man’s personal apocalypse.

Nominated for a 2012 Academy Award® for Best Documentary, HELL AND BACK AGAIN is available today via Cable VOD, digital download and streaming platforms, Blu-ray and DVD. The film will air on the PBS television series “Independent Lens” in May 2012 through a partnership with the producers and ITVS.

The “stars” of the film are Nathan Harris and his wife, Ashley (now 29 years old). They are self-aware, articulate, funny and generous. They have shared their most intimate and painful moments with the world in order to help us understand what they and hundreds of thousands like them are going through. Ashley's role in Nathan's rehabilitation is a great testimony to what thousands of women are going through, trying to maintain intimacy and normalcy while picking up the pieces of the lives of their husbands, sons, fathers or brothers.
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