A combat veteran’s fragile struggle to overcome PTSD and transition to life as a farmer in North Carolina.
Home from three combat tours in Iraq, Alex Sutton forges a new identity as a farmer, hatching chicks and raising goats on 43 acres in rural North Carolina. Farmer/Veteran shows Alex diving into life on the farm with his new love Jessica, while the traumas of war linger on.
The stories he tells about battlefield experiences become unmoored from reality as he cycles between states of heightened awareness and “feeling zombified” from a cocktail of prescriptions meant to keep him stable. For the viewer, as for Alex, what to believe about his past is uncertain as we learn more of his own complicated truths. The farm becomes a terrain to unearth what is buried, what it really means to be “the perfect soldier,” and where to find the way forward.
Alix is an award-winning documentary maker, both in film and audio, and has been working in nonfiction storytelling for over a decade. Her second feature HELEN AND THE BEAR is premiering in April 2024 at Hot Docs. She co-founded the Bay Area-based Collective of Documentary Women Cinematographers and runs the series Documentary Happy Hour.
She has a Masters in Environmental Management from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. Alix is certified in Ecological Horticulture from the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz and, for a time, worked on small-scale organic farms. She has a certificate in Climate Change and Health through the Yale School of Public Health. Alix is currently a PhD student in the Energy + Resources Group at UC Berkeley, in the Climate Futures Lab and the Critical Ruralities Lab.
Alix is also a trauma-informed yoga teacher and lectures on the impacts of vicarious trauma in documentary making.
