Indianapolis International Film Festival 2009

Jerry is a Marine reservist who was a young patriot and idealist when he served in the first Gulf War. When he is called up for deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq, Jerry is a father of three; older and embittered by a life besieged by broken promises, and unfulfilled desires. He returns a changed man, transformed by horrors committed that go beyond comprehension and sanity, pain inflicted that cannot be forgiven. He lives a life verging on the edge of poverty, his children afraid of his unexplained outbursts of rage, his wife, Nora, unsympathetic to the nosebleeds and night terrors he suffers. She hides money her sons earn from their paper route in case they need to leave. The crowded trailer he shares with his family becomes a prison; his failure as a man, his actions as a soldier, his punishment. He realizes that the respect and dignity he has spent his life achieving will always elude him. When he realizes Nora has betrayed him he is driven by anger and despair to commit an act so heinous and irreversible that nothing he has experienced in combat could have prepared him for.Badland is a gut-wrenching, poignant look at the aftermath of war on a returning Iraq war veteran and his family. It is the story of a man who loses his soul and how a daughter's love and faith brings redemption to his unspeakable crimes.