Movies that depict various types of trauma:

• Antwone Fisher is based on a true story of a young man dealing with his traumatic past that includes multiple placements in foster care, as well as physical abuse and sexual abuse.

• Deliver Us From Evil is a film that surrounds sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

• Fast Runner is the first feature film ever to be written, directed and acted entirely in Inuktitut, the language of Canada’s Inuit people. It won an award at Cannes. Set in the ancient past, the film starts slowly as it retells an Inuit legend passed down through oral tradition. In a community already split by rivalry and lust for power, an evil shaman commits a murder and places a curse that plays out through the lives of the characters, until spiritual forces and human courage begin the process of healing and confrontation. It provides an alternative to revenge that is inspiring.

• Fearless is about a plane crash survivor and his subsequent post-traumatic stress disorder.

• Forbidden Games touches on themes about erotism in childhood and shows a dramatic traumatizing event in the life of a young girl.

• Hotel Rwanda explores the harsh reality of the Rwandan genocide.

• Metamorphosis by Netalie Braun explores the lives of rape victims in Israel. This film was given an award by the International Society for the Study of Trauma & Dissociation.

• Monster portrays a female serial killer, Eileen Wournos, who experienced childhood and adulthood sexual abuse. Charlize Theron won an Academy Award for best actress for this role in Monster. To note, when Theron was 15, she witnessed her mother shoot and kill her physically abusive father. Because it was ruled self-defense, the police did not press charges against her mother.

• Mother of Mine is a movie based on the evacuation of 70,000 Finnish children to the safety of Sweden in World War II. The movie depicts a boy grappling with his abandonment, and his foster mother grappling with a loss of her own that prevents her from attaching to the boy. The documentary of the actual events is “Sotalapset” and is also available in Finnish.

• Mysterious Skin portrays two boys who were sexually abused by a coach. One boy developed amnesia and the other became a prostitute. The boys find each other later in life and attempt to begin their process of healing.

• Pan’s Labyrinth is about a little girl and how she manages the reality of an abusive step-father, a helpless mother, and the guilt of her disobedience as meaning risk for her unborn baby brother.

• Schindler’s List covers the traumatic events of the Holocaust.

• Spotlight is a movie based on the true story of how Boston Globe reporters uncovered the corruption of a local catholic church after investigating into many allegations of child molestation by an unfrocked priest.

• The Cemetery Club is a fantastic documentary about a group of aging Holocaust survivors who meet monthly in a cemetery in Israel. It follows two women who reacted to the trauma in quite different ways: one profoundly narcissistic, the other depressed with many physical problems.

• The Fisher King portrays a DJ whose off-hand comment triggers a tragedy, followed by his descent into despair as he interacts with a survivor of that tragedy.

• The Machinist is a dark movie about a man has severe PTSD and amnesia and how he recovers his own memory.

• The Magdalene explores the reality of teen pregnancy in Ireland a few decades ago, where teens were dropped off at convents where they were further abused by nuns and priests (as a way of making them “pay for their sins”). The movie is powerful, and at times, disturbing.

• The Wall by Pink Floyd depicts the story of a character named “Pink” who loses his father as a child and is abused at school by teachers. Each of Pink’s traumas become “another brick in the wall”, leading him to increasing depths of self-imposed isolation. To note, Roger Waters, the bass player and songwriter for Pink Floyd, lost his own father in World War II.

• The War at Home portrays a Vietnam Veteran who is unable to settle back into life in his small home town after the atrocities he’s faced.

• The White Ribbon a postmodern German film that won the 2010 foreign film Oscar, is about the psychological basis of Nazism as seen through social and familial relationships in a small village in pre-World War I Germany. The film covers physical and sexual abuse of children, the transgenerational transmission of trauma, anti-Semitism, and class and group prejudices. The movie becomes somewhat of a thriller without a clear wrap up, so it would be great to spur discussion.

• Two Women portrays a widow struggling to survive in battle-scarred Italy along with a teenage daughter. The film begins with both women sharing romantic feelings toward a young man, a story line disrupted by the ravages of World War II and the horrifying rape of both mother and daughter in a church by Allied Moroccan soldiers. The aftermath of this atrocity finds both characters dealing with even more, varying shades of grief, as the war seems to sap all that they had treasured and leaves them struggling for their emotional and physical survival.

• Waltz with Bashir portrays an individual’s societal dissociation. The film tells the story of a man who experiences amnesia after his time as a soldier in Israel’s war against Lebanon. The movie depicts his search to uncover his actions during the war.