UNAFF 2005 : Films : Off to War

OFF TO WAR
Brent Renaud, Craig Renaud (Iraq/USA) 80'

Description:
On July 26, 2003, the lives of many families in rural Arkansas began to swing in an unexpected and even frightening direction. That's when members of the 39th Brigade of the Arkansas National Guard were officially told that they would be heading to Iraq and wouldn't be coming home until the spring of 2005. Off to War follows fifty-seven citizen soldiers from Clarksville, Arkansas, as they leave their jobs and their families to deploy to Iraq. It follows them through training and their ultimate deployment in war torn Iraq, ill-prepared for the tragic effects it has on them, their families and their community.

Biography:
Brent and Craig Renaud are brothers and filmmakers who were born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. Since 1995 they have been working with celebrated documentary filmmaker Jon Alpert at the Downtown Community TV Center in New York on award-winning projects in places like Afghanistan, Cambodia, Bolivia, China, Pakistan and Iraq. Their programs have aired on HBO, PBS, CBS, the Discovery Channel, the Discovery Times Channel and ESPN. They have been embedded with the Arkansas National Guard in Iraq for the past year while filming Off to War for the Discovery Times Channel. In addition to Off to War, the Renaud brothers' first film for HBO's America Undercover series, called Dope Sick Love, aired on March 10th, 2005. For Dope Sick Love, they followed the lives of two drug addicted couples on the streets of New York for eighteen months.

Contact Information:
DCTV
87 Lafayette St.
New York, NY 10013
E-mail: craig@dctvny.org and brent@dctvny.org
URL: www.dctvny.org/productions/off_to_war.html

Co-presented with the San Francisco Film Society (SFFS)