Through 30,000 hand‑painted frames and the voice of Karen Jones, a daughter reckoning with her father’s war trauma, this short film invites viewers into a dreamlike experience — where memory dissolves, drips, and reassembles before our eyes. It’s not just a film to be watched. It’s a film to be entered.
Rather than rely on interviews, archival, or narration, The Re-Membered Father paints what most veteran-family documentaries describe. It translates trauma into art — allowing audiences to feel memory from the inside out. What begins as a void between father and daughter transforms into a visual world of color, wonder, and unexpected connection.
She couldn’t change what happened. But she could change what it meant.
That’s the arc. And it’s told not through exposition — but through brushstroke after brushstroke, line after line, as memory is reframed and reimagined in real time.
It’s testimony turned into emotional landscape.
It’s trauma — re-authored.
It’s memory — in motion.
WHY THIS FILM
More than 300 million families worldwide live in the wake of war.
But their stories are often left unspoken.
The Re-Membered Father makes that silence visible. And then, it reimagines it.
Where most films about PTSD emphasize darkness, The Re‑Membered Father invites light. Its hand-painted style opens space for wonder, whimsy, and healing — for viewers who might otherwise turn away from the weight of trauma. It offers a powerful alternative to clinical language: a film that uplifts, animates, and expands what’s possible in memory storytelling.
For veterans. For families. For survivors of any kind.
This film says: Sometimes the story you’ve carried isn’t the story you choose to keep.
This is re-seeing. Re-membering. And ultimately, re-authoring — through art.
Goals
Raise Awareness about how PTSD dismembers identity and disrupts family memory.
Educate mental health professionals, educators, veterans’ organizations, and policymakers about the ripple effects of intergenerational trauma.
Empower Audiences to engage in reflective practices that heal estranged or incomplete family relationships.
Promote Use in Therapy & Education by offering the film and accompanying guide as tools for trauma-informed classrooms, counseling sessions, and caregiver support groups.
Who It’s For
Veterans and their families
Therapists and trauma specialists
Medical and mental health educators
Occupational therapists and caregivers
Adult children of emotionally absent or traumatized parents
Grief counselors and pastoral care leaders
High school & university educators teaching about trauma, history, or memory
Key Themes
The invisibility of PTSD and its impact on family systems
Memory as both wound and path to healing
Intergenerational storytelling as an act of recovery
Dismemberment and re-membering as metaphors for psychological reintegration
The power of oral history and eulogy to reclaim love across time
Call to Action
The Re-Membered Father invites communities to look again at those who have returned from war—physically present but emotionally fragmented—and to open the door to conversations that might restore memory, dignity, and connection. Through screenings, discussions, and partnerships with health and educational institutions, the film seeks to shift the narrative from silence to storytelling, from absence to understanding, and from trauma to transformation.