During a particularly difficult, candid reflection on PTSD and suicide, Robert Brady, one of the film’s three main subjects, was describing the despair that can take hold. In those moments, he said, you don’t know if you can ever get back. For us, that line captured the central theme of this film: what does it mean for soldiers who go to war to come back? What does it take? How are the soldiers who come home transformed by their experience of war? Whom have they become? What have they lost and gained? Do soldiers who go to war ever really come back? The “if” is an important part of the title. The film invites viewers into this question. We hope to provoke engagement with ongoing public conversations about the post-9/11 wars, the inadequate resources available for veterans, and the place of the military in American society more broadly.

This kind of film takes deep trust and mutual respect. Our shared history in Iraq was a starting point, but ultimately time was the only way to build real trust. We embedded deeply in their lives. We ate Thanksgiving dinner at Robert’s home, tagged along on Kristina’s family beach vacation, and celebrated Phil’s daughter’s birthday with all of his relatives. We developed meaningful relationships with each of them and built a strong rapport off camera, which helped ease any anxieties when cameras were rolling.

There were also certain moments when we chose to turn our cameras off, when it felt disrespectful or invasive to film. We are humans first, filmmakers second. Those decisions showed our subjects that we weren’t there to exploit them or use their stories for our own ends. We were clear from the beginning that we wanted to tell the truth, in all of its complexity, and our subjects shared that goal.

Projects like If You Can Ever Get Back are more important than ever. The “forever wars” have ended, but their consequences are profound and ongoing, and it’s going to take a lot of persistent work to make sure that the people affected are not overlooked. So many veterans struggle with mental health challenges, moral injury, and extensive physical health problems. Political attention spans are short and honestly reckoning the consequences of war is difficult. But it is during peacetime, when the exigencies of war have eased, that we can and must have those harder conversations.

There is a generation of adults that don’t remember 9/11, and soon there will be a generation that doesn’t remember the Iraq war. Films like ours contribute to collective memory. They also help bridge the profound divide between military families and those far removed from America’s wars.