State of Mind
Healing Trauma
By Djo Tunda Wa Munga
Steven Markovitz and Djo TundaWa Munga for SUKA!

In war torn countries people will not be able to be productive and development will fail until they overcome their trauma. Yet, Is it even possible for a country overwhelmed by the legacy of five million deaths to successfully heal and move on?

That is the underlying question in Congolese documentary filmmaker Djo Munga's powerful film State of Mind, about the use of psychotherapy to talk about loss, forgiving, and finding new memories to overlay the traumatic older ones.

Psychotherapist Albert Pesso is invited to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, where many people suffer from years of post traumatic stress disorder. Pesso is there to train health practitioners in symbolic interaction, a form of relatively short-term, group-session based, psychotherapy.

In the training sessions the health care workers themselves, many of whom are also survivors of horrendous violence, work through the therapeutic process with therapist Pesso. State of Mind: Healing Trauma captures the sessions in a series of fly-on-the-wall scenes, and candid, hearthbreaking interviews with the participants put the effort in a larger context. A layered, engrossing and intriguing look at a national collective trauma and one ambitious initiative to try and heal wounds.

52 minutes
© 2010
Purchase $298 DVD
Order No. QA-554

Reviews
"Al Pesso, a Master therapist from the U.S. demonstrates how the language of trauma and recovery transcends language and culture, and that it is possible to install a sense of safety and protection in even the most traumatized individuals. A remarkable achievement." Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Director, National Complex Trauma Treatment Network

Awards & Conference Screenings
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, 2010
Dokfest Munich, 2010

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A Video Essay on Teenage Grief: Ninety percent of children in the United States may experience the loss of a loved one by the time they are eighteen. In this two-part DVD, five young women meet to share their experiences of grief over the loss of their fathers from suicide, accident, a drug overdose, and cancer.

To rent or purchase this film, please visit the Icarus Films website

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