BECAUSE EVERYONE NEEDS A PLACE TO CALL HOME...
BRATS: Our Journey Home A Donna Musil Film Featuring Narration and Music by Kris Kristofferson
BRATS: Our Journey Home
BRATS: Our Journey Home
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BRATS: Our Journey Home
• Click here to read the original Grady News article p.6

Grady College Grady News
"Musil Completes Work of Passion"
Spring 2007, p.31

Article
Georgia resident and independent filmmaker Donna Musil (ABJ ’81) directed and produced Brats: Our Journey Home, a seven-year work of passion about children who grew up in military families.

Musil was raised an Army brat and has lived and worked in Germany, Korea, Ireland, Copenhagen, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky and Paris. As a child, she moved 12 times in 16 years. Her father was a JAG officer and military judge.

Musil graduated from Grady, earned a UGA law degree, and worked in a variety of jobs, but always felt “different” from her fellow Americans. In 1997, she learned that she was not alone. While surfing the Internet, Musil stumbled upon a military brats registry. A few weeks later, she attended a reunion in Washington, D.C. It was revelatory. For the first time, Musil felt like she “belonged” somewhere. That’s when she decided to make the documentary and thus began her “journey home.”

Brats: Our Journey Home has been created from over 500 interviews with “brats” from all branches of the services and integrated with rare archival footage, home movies from post-war Japan and pre-war Vietnam. It also includes never-before- seen photographs from private sources and is narrated and features songs by Kris Kristofferson. General Norman Schwarzkopf and Kristofferson share their brat stories, which are no less amazing than the stories of everyday folks like Olga Ramos and Laird Knight.

In 2006, the film was an official selection at 19 film festivals and won “Best Documentary” at the Estes Park Film Festival and the “Emerging Eye” First Time Director’s Award at the Roving Eye Documentary Film Festival. In 2007, Musil will accompany the film on national tour. When not working, Musil lives on a lake in central Georgia and loves to read, travel and explore the Blue Ridge Mountains.

BRATS: Our Journey Home
BRATS: Our Journey Home
The first documentary about growing up military.