Available to book: TO BE OF SERVICE

Dear Programmers and Bookers,

We've had the pleasure of working with Academy Award-nominated documentarian Josh Aronson on two films, Orchestra of Exiles and Talent Has Hunger. I'm pleased to announce that we will open Josh's new film, To Be of Service, in New York and Los Angeles beginning November 1st. The film looks at how veterans with PTSD have found comfort and healing by being partnered with service dogs.

Please let me know if you're interested in having a screening around Veteran's Day (November 11). I'm happy to send a viewing link and further information. And check out our new trailer (link below!).

Marc Mauceri
marcm@firstrunfeatures.com
212-243-0600 x20

To Be of Service is a feature-length documentary about war veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) who are paired with a service dog to help them regain their lives. Returning home for these vets is often plagued with depression and a wrenching disconnect from the world they once inhabited. Family, old friends and jobs seem foreign, and newly returned warriors struggle to function and return to a normal civilian life.

Service dogs offer a miraculous ray of hope in helping them come back to an independent, feeling life. The viewer learns it is the fragile life of young warriors, changed forever by combat, that is the true cost of war.

Josh Aronson's comments on To Be of Service:

To Be of Service is about the enduring costs of war told through the lives of veterans of the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We follow vets with PTSD who, after years of struggle with substance abuse, suicide attempts, talk therapy, and prescription medications have finally come to find that bonding with a service dog helps them find a way back to independence, emotion and love. Almost miraculously, through the unconditional acceptance and love of their service dogs, our veterans are able to re-establish their lives and family connections in a way that is uplifting and deeply moving.

In showing so viscerally how war ravages the young men and women we send into the maw of combat, To Be of Service is a plea to our present and future leaders to use every possible political and diplomatic means at our disposal to avoid armed conflict.

Another theme of the film is how America is neglecting its deep obligation to return our soldiers properly to civilian society. For thousands of years, from the early Greeks to the Native American nations of our own land, warriors were taught the rites of return, the rituals of healing and they were welcomed, honored and celebrated for their service. It’s all too clear that we have dropped this ball and that neglect is haunting us. We were warned of the consequences of this by our first American general:

"The future of our armed services and the future of our country will be integrally linked with how we take care of our veterans."
-George Washington