MARQUETTE - A new documentary film receiving rave reviews across the nation is titled "Where Soldiers Come From."
Where, in this documentary, is Hancock, Mich. The film, making its Upper Peninsula debut in a week, is the work of a Houghton native who focused on some young National Guardsmen as they made the transition from new high school grads to soldiers fighting in Afghanistan to young men returning home from war.
Heather Courtney, a 1985 graduate of Houghton High School, is the film's producer and director. She left the U.P. to attend Northwestern University, then earned a master's in film from the University of Texas at Austin, the city where she now lives.
Over the past 10 years, she's been involved in documentary film making. She returned to visit Houghton in 2007.
"I wanted to make a film about rural America," she said. "Rural America is not represented very accurately in mainstream media. So I went back to my hometown to tell a story about rural America. I was researching ideas when I found these young National Guardsmen and started to go to their monthly trainings. That's where I met Dom and his friends, just after they graduated from high school. They were 19 years old."
Dom is Dominic Fredianelli, who along with friends Cole Smith and Matt "Bodi" Beaudoin, became the focus of the film.
"Initially, I was just going to follow this group of friends to find what it's like when you grow up," Courtney said. "I didn't know they were going to be deployed. It became a changing situation. It became a coming-of-age story."
The first year to 18 months, Courtney followed the friends as they did "normal" teen activities, but the deployment changed the documentary's focus a bit.
"It added another layer," she said. "It was about coming of age in the context of war."
Courtney traveled to Afghanistan to capture the young men's experiences there as members of the 1431st Company of the 107th Engineering Battalion of Michigan Army National Guard deployed from Calumet.
She started filming their story in February 2007 and finished the film in March of this year.
"I guess the biggest surprise was when I was getting toward the end of editing," Courtney said. "I was looking back at the early interviews with them then watched the more recent interviews and I was amazed at how different the guys looked. I really could see how much they had changed.
"I could see how much the war did effect them in subtle ways," she said. "I could see the loss of innocence in their faces."
While Courtney's father died several years ago and her mother has moved away from Houghton, she feels as though she still has family in the Copper Country.
"I feel these guys are my family," she said. "I have lived up there on and off over the past four years and I have gotten to know them and their families so well."
Courtney and the young men have been traveling with the documentary as it has premiered across the country, including at a number of prestigious film festivals.
"They have come with me and they do a question-and-answer session after the film," Courtney said.
The film's New York City premiere Sept. 9 drew a positive review from The New York Times, which said, "In its compassionate, modest gaze, the real cost of distant political decisions is softly illuminated, as well as the shame of a country with little to offer its less fortunate young people than a ticket to a battlefield."
Courtney, who with the young men was at the Chicago premiere of the film this weekend, said the N.Y. Times review was "exciting," but truly appreciates the reaction from those who've watched the documentary.
"The response has been really great at every screening we've had," she said. "Especially at festivals. At the Traverse City Film Festival we sold out the State Theater and received two or three standing ovations.
"What has happened in Los Angeles and Texas and New York and Washington has been really enthusiastic responses," Courtney said. "The people come to realize these are really nice guys. They are not just 'made' to be that way, they are truly honest and articulate. The emotions they have are genuine. They are willing to talk to people about things, even their struggles."
Eventually, "Where Soldiers Come From" may make its way to PBS, may have a wider theatrical release and could be on DVD and streaming video. And despite screenings in some of the country's biggest markets, next Sunday's debut is one Courtney is anxious about.
"It's so exciting we're doing a showing in the Upper Peninsula. That's the one I am most nervous about," she said. "It will be great to hear what people there have to say. This is not just about these individuals, it's about a whole community."
Renee Prusi can be contacted at 906-228-2500, ext. 253. Her email address is rprusi@miningjournal.net.
