Restrepo Directors Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington: The Movieline Interview

There's that moment in the film where a soldier describes the Taliban being so bold as to literally come up to them and take their weapons from them.

SJ: That was in Operation Rock Avalanche [a deadly mission Battle Company undertakes in the film], but stepping outside of the movie for a moment, Chosen Company was almost overrun three different times. Twice at fortified positions with heavy weapons, and they almost overran the positions and killed everybody.

So I'm going to ask the obvious question that will be on the minds of the average moviegoer leaving Restrepo, and that is -- are you guys nuts?

[Both laugh]

I mean at what point do you say, I've done my duty, I've told the story of these guys, and I want to get out of here because people are being shot all around me? People who are better trained, probably, than you are, for this kind of combat. So what is going through your mind? What are you telling yourself that's keeping you there?

TH: We're storytellers, and we're also pretty good at telling stories at the extreme edges. That's what I do. I would love to tell a story about the rain forest in the Amazon, but the reality is that for the last ten years, that's not what I've been doing. And I've been interested in stories about young men and violence, and I've been interested in that idea. In 2003, I was embedded with a rebel army in West Africa, and in some ways, the men were not much different from the men I was embedded with in Afghanistan. The same kind of motivations. So doing this documentary was a continuation, I think, of what both Sebastian and I were both thinking and exploring about war. And if you've invested ten years of life into it or more, then you want to kind of make something, or reach a point where you've distilled something. And I really feel that Restrepo is a distillation of what I've learned about war, and what I've seen of war.

SJ: In the civil wars that I've covered in West Africa, you're on your own in a very volatile, chaotic and dangerous society. That's terrifying -- even low levels of danger in that kind of situation are terrifying. This was new. This was different. What made our work possible, and if fact I think what makes being a soldier in combat possible, is if you're in a situation with a group of men you know very well and that you care about, and you know they're going to look out for you -- if something happens to you, you know they're going to help you; if something happens to them, you know you're going to help them -- once you're in a situation like that, the level of danger can be extremely high, but your fear is greatly reduced. There's almost like a group anesthetic, and it allows people to function in situations of incredible danger, and in some cases, situations of almost guaranteed death. It allows them to function with an almost calmness and a purpose. That's not because these guys are insanely brave. The group bond helps you get through those situations. By the time it got hairy out there, I already felt connected to these guys. I though, whatever's going to happen will happen, but it's going to happen to all of us.

Did you find they quickly adopted you, or did that take a while?

TH: There's been a lot of discussion about the embed system, the ethics of it. The U.S. Military provides a system so that you're embedded, but it doesn't mean that you're emotionally embedded. What we sought to do, like any good documentary maker or storyteller, you want to become embedded in your subjects, and that takes time. Interestingly enough, while everybody thinks they know these stories, no one has ever followed a platoon of soldiers for an entire deployment.

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