Resilience (James Redford, 2015): USA

“The child may not remember, but the body remembers.”

Reviewed by Ashley Gatimu. Viewed at the Lobero theater in Santa Barbara.

Resilience is a social justice documentary about the new ground breaking research of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) and the movement of treating and preventing toxic stress. This film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this past year and is gaining publicity quickly. The main message of Resilience is simply warning Americans about what happens in your childhood can and most often will have affects that carry with you into your adult life. Toxic stress is talked about a lot and how it has terrible effects on your mind and body and how cultivating a spirit of hope can help you even when your dealing with stressors that are beyond your control. To get a sense of truthfulness for the audience, the camera crew visited a number of hospitals, schools, and conferences to find real stories from real people to present in the film. Heartbreaking and uplifting, alarming and being aware are the stages I went through while watching this documentary. But like they say, what is predictable is also preventable.

The film starts off by introducing a variety of doctors and educators who work together to spread awareness of ACE. We learn from the film that ACE is a short, confidential test anyone can take to determine the number of traumatic childhood experiences they may of had. If you’ve recieve a score of 4 or more, chances are your health is at risk in some type of way. In the United States alone we spend over 3 million dollars on healthcare, but only 5% of that money goes towards preventing the causes. What educators have learned is kids don’t necessary have the skills to cope with their stressors, so most schools are now hiring a drama teacher. What this drama teacher does is read and interact in a fun way for the kids to get them to open up and talk about their problems, and then deal with them in a healthy way. More and more research is coming out of how ongoing toxic stress leads to many problems for your health from heart disease to cancer. As this new research continues to unfold, people like Dr. Nadine Burke (doctor from San Francisco in the film) are trying everything in their power to bring awareness and bring forth creative ways to help people lower their stress levels.

I would say one thing this movie lacks is a man’s point of view. What I mean by that is all the people who were interviewed throughout the movie were woman and the only men in this movie were the medical professionals. However, this film does a great job of showing all their scientific findings in a way the audience will know and understand. Resileince doesn’t just  give you the facts about the research or boring content. Instead it uses animation throughout the film, real stories and real people to make it seem more relatable.