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
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read the original story on First Coast News.

First Coast News/WTLV-Channel 12 News segment - Jacksonville, FL
"'BRATS: Our Journey Home' Makes First Coast Debut"
Kyle Meenan
Aired May 24, 2007

When Filmmaker Donna Musil completed her documentary in the fall of 2006, she didn't go with the major film companies for distribution.

She's sharing her story -- the story of millions of children who grew up as sons and daughters of servicemen and women -- one city at a time.

The documentary, "BRATS: Our Journey Home" is perhaps a bit ironic in the sense military children featured in the film HAD no set home... at least not the ground zero most of American kids enjoyed year after year growing up.

In the opening scenes is a shot of Musil herself as a child in Korea in the 1960s. Just one of a dozen chapters of her life growing up around the world that helped inspire her to put the story she shared with so many others to film.

"BRATS" presents a kind of healing to all those children who moved so frequently and gained strengths and weaknesses along the way.

"We really miss that environment in some ways... and did you join the military yourself?"

Musil is answering dozens of questions from a roomful of moviegoers who have remained in their seats long after the closing credits have rolled.

The film has touched them deeply. Some, having old wounds opened... others finding clarity to years of emotional fog.

Musil is traveling around the nation sharing her baby with tens of thousands of others. And at each stop she's taking the time to answer the myriad of questions to help her audiences understand the outpouring of emotions they experience watching "BRATS."

"There's so many things I want to say but I need to digest the whole thing!" said Garf Cooper.

Another woman in the audience shared her appreciation.

"It was very well done. And it helped me to feel a lot of reasons why I have gone through some of the things that I have gone through. Feelings. Emotions, and so forth growing up trying to figure things out."

"At the same time that (military) life gave us so many strengths, but it also didn't teach us certain skills that we kind of need as an adult," said Musil.

In less than one year, the "BRATS" tour has visited more than three dozen cities... and with an estimated 15-million brethren on the horizon, its story carries a common thread, touching the heart.

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