I’ve been writing about The Invisible War, Kirby Dick’s documentary about the sexual assault epidemic in the military, since I saw it at Sundance last year. And now that it’s been nominated for an Academy Award, Dick and I sat down to discuss the movie’s impact, which Dick said had been a surprise:

Even before Hagel’s promise, The Invisible War was getting traction within the military itself, where it’s become a training tool and an agent of cultural change. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh screened The Invisible War for a meeting of wing commanders in November. And the rank and file are seeing the movie as well. Dick says that a distributor he works with who sells movies to the military and other institutions estimates that 235,000 service members—or nearly 10 percent of the 2.9 million members of the active and reserve armed forces—saw The Invisible War in 2012.

“The military itself is using the film for sexual-assault training, in part because, of course, they have no tools,” Dick said. “Eighty-five percent of those [viewers] are men. I think men seeing this is the real game changer, too. I think the film, not only on a policy level but on a cultural level, [is changing] the military. What people would joke about, you see this film and you don’t joke about it anymore.”

For all Dick is shocked by the failures of legislators and the military to act sooner, and by the Washington press corps for failing to investigate sexual assaults at Marine Barracks Washington—“There are documents, there is a lot of stuff there,” he said—he remains hopeful that the military can change, and that the rest of society can as well.

“The military’s done this before with racism. They could do it with this issue. And they could actually become a leader on the issue of sexual assault for the entire society,” he said. “There’s such divisiveness within this country, and especially around the military. There are a lot of issues with the military. But I think it’s a wonderful thought to think that civilians in society will look to the military as having been a leader in helping to reduce sexual assault across the country.”

It’s true that it’s easier—and probably better—for this to happen with documentaries than with feature films, television shows, or novels. But The Invisible War is one of the reasons I write about popular culture. You need narratives to push policy ideas forward. You need characters, be they human or fictional, to embody the impact of policies, or the lack thereof. And sometimes, people who have been deaf to the stories told by real people in their lives can hear those stories more clearly from the remove of a movie screen.

The Invisible War, the Kirby Dick-directed documentary about the sexual assault epidemic in the military, was one of the best movies I saw at Sundance. Its exploration of the culture of which scandals like the Tailhook case are just a symptom is powerful. And the movie takes on a rarely-discussed subject, how sexual assault affects men both as victims and as through their wives’, daughters’, and parents’ trauma. The Invisible War is a difficult movie to watch, but it’s a moving and bracing one, and it’s helped spark a national conversation about the damage done by indifference and abdications of responsibility within the chain of command. I spoke to the movie’s producer, Amy Ziering, about finding men and women who were willing to come forward about to share their stories, and how the military can lead society—if it decides it wants to change. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

I’m curious how both of you came to this subject matter.

We read an article in Salon about four or five years ago, and we were kind of shocked and appalled by what we’d read, and started doing our own investigating, and found [the story] was correct if not worse. Of course, we’d been aware of things like Tailhook and Aberdeen, and these scandals that were reported in the press. But we hadn’t been aware that it was an ongoing problem in the way that it was. The statistics were one of the things the article helped us point us towards. These flare-ups that were reported in the press as these one-off situations were symptoms of an underlying chronic condition. They would get attention when there was this cluster issue that rose to the surface. It’s misperceived in that way…It’s served the military and promoted what we we have called a coverup. Its ideal situtation is [assaults are] presented as a strange, aberrant occurrance as opposed to something that’s ongoing and daily. They do temporary damage control and everything moves on.

How did you find your subjects? Given the consequences women often face for speaking out about being sexually assaulted, it couldn’t have been easy.

We did extensive investigative work. we went to VA centers and put out flyers. we talked to everyone who was an advocate in any way, we used social media, we had a Facebook page. One reason this issue hasn’t come forward is it doesn’t breed naturally outspoken advocates. The nature of the trauma is so severe and radically debilitating that people are reticent to speak up because of the retaliation they’ve experienced, and because of the difficulties they’re having in their day to day lives. It’s hard to become an activist when you can barely get out of bed…That was a very long process. By the time we decided who we were going forward with as our main subjects, we built a good, trusting relationship. We were careful to preselect people who we thought would have the stability, wherewithal, fortitude to handle public scrutiny when the film came out. The last thing we wanted this to do was negatively affect anybody. Any interview, we said your mental health comes first, we can stop and start.

How have they reacted to seeing the movie?

Hugely positively. It’s been life-changing just to feel like they’re not alone, they have this community, and to feel suported and believed. That’s a huge difference to someone who’s been marginalized. Two of them said it saved their marriage. Many of them, when they’ve shown relatives, the change in the relatives’ attitudes really improved all their family relations…We’ve had several people offer to fix Kori’s jaw, and we have three families that have banded together to undertake that.
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