The First Documentary About Growing Up Military
Narrated & Featuring Songs by Kris Kristofferson
Written & Directed by Donna Musil

U.S. military brats share intimate memories about their unique childhoods – growing up on military bases around the world, then struggling to fit into an American lifestyle with which they have little in common. Narrated and featuring songs by Kris Kristofferson. Interviews include the late General Norman Schwarzkopf, author Mary Edwards Wertsch, and brats of all ages, races, and branches of service.

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DESCRIPTION

It’s hard to imagine a military brat’s childhood. Moving from base to base around the world, they are at home everywhere – and nowhere. There are 2 million children being raised in the military today. An estimated 15 million Americans are former brats. They include singers Pink and Wiz Khalifa, authors Pat Conroy and Suzanne Collins (of the “Hunger Games”), basketball star Shaquille O’Neal and Heisman Trophy winner, Robert Griffin III, actors Julianne Moore and Neil Patrick Harris, and many more.

BRATS is the first cinematic glimpse into a global subculture whose journey to adulthood is a high-octane mixture of incredible excitement and enormous pain. Make no mistake – BRATSis not about the U.S. military – it’s about their children, who grow up in a paradox that is idealistic and authoritarian, privileged and perilous, supportive and stifling – all at the same time. Their passports say “United States,” but they’re really citizens of the world.

Singer/songwriter and Air Force brat Kris Kristofferson leads us through the heart of their experiences, sharing intimate memories with fellow brats, including author Mary Edwards Wertsch, whose ground-breaking book, Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress, was one of the seminal inspirations for the film. Their stories reveal the peculiar landscape of their childhood, the culture that binds them together, and the power it prednisone exerts over their adult lives.

A seven-year work of passion by independent filmmaker Donna Musil, BRATS features rare archival footage, home movies and private photographs from post-war Japan, Germany, and Vietnam.

Go to www.bratswithoutborders.org for more information about growing up military, the BRAT Art Institute, and other projects which have grown out of the BRATS film, including BRATS Clubs, BRATS Educate-the-Educator and Teen Transition Workshops, UNCLASSIFIED: The Military Kid Art Show (a traveling museum exhibit), Our Own Private Battlefield, the first documentary-in-progress about the intergenerational effects of combat PTSD on military children, and Truman’s Kids, the first documentary-in-progress about the long-term effect on military children of President Truman’s 1948 Executive prednisone Order integrating the United States military.