BILLINGS — For veterans carrying the invisible scars of war, finding the words to open up is not always easy.
Through a weekend workshop at MSU Billings, a group of local veterans were given the chance through filmmaking.
Watch the full story:
The Patton Veterans Project is a national nonprofit founded by Benjamin Patton, the grandson of General George S. Patton.
The organization hosted its “I Was There” film workshop with 13 Montana veterans and service members. Over three emotionally charged days, participants transformed personal stories into short films, addressing themes like PTSD, homelessness, substance use, and suicide.
The film program travels across the country, but currently focuses on Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, which are regions with some of thenation’s highest rates of veteran suicide. Montana has the highest rate in the country. The organization hopes storytelling can help bridge the silence while also teaching valuable new skills.
“Montana has some of the highest depression rates amongst veterans and amongst just this regular population," said retired Army veteran William Watson. "As veterans, we serve and we serve our population, and it's kind of what we need to be focusing on.”
Watson served 20 years in the Army and is now a licensed addiction counselor and recent graduate of MSUB’s human services program. He knows the weight many veterans bear, and his commitment to service has evolved.
"Twenty years in the Army, selfless service is something that I've kind of picked up on, and now it's like, I can still do that. I can still be of service," said Watson. “Coming together as a veteran community and just coming together and meeting other veterans and then talking to them really brings out a lot of life.”
Veterans from multiple branches came together to write, shoot, and edit three separate short films drawn from their lived experiences. For many in the group, it was the first time they had acted or worked with a camera.
“I have not done anything like this before at all, and it's a really great experience, the bonding between multiple branches, both male and female, and hearing stories from how they want to share their stories,” said Marine Corps veteran Jeremiah Thompson. “It's been an amazing experience.”
Thompson’s film follows a "veteran fairy" who guides a woman struggling with sobriety through the consequences of her choices. It blends dark themes with humor, which is something many veterans say helps soften the emotional intensity.
“The film that we're trying to make is about choices. When you struggle with PTSD, it complicates life a little bit and makes life a little bit more cumbersome," said Thompson. "We want to bring a little bit of a comedic relief on it because we're trying to make light of a dark situation.”
The second day of the workshop is typically the most emotional. With the help of a psychologist on site, it allowed stories and trauma to be shared without judgment. It also allowed others to relate to those stories and form a community.
“There was a lot of jokes (on Saturday), and then we had some serious moments, and then we kind of brought it back with some jokes," said Watson. "I always love doing that with other veterans because it's really hard to talk about our experiences to what I call 'normies.'”
“It's been freeing just due to the fact that you're not going through a lot of this stuff alone," added Thompson. “It reignited the veteran community for me. It's nice to get back involved with workshops like this.”
Supporting the veterans behind the camera is a team of professional filmmakers from across the country, including Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Ungco. He has been involved with the project for more than 11 years and now serves as the workshop supervisor.
“I've never been in any film environment where you can kind of get that kind of truth out of someone in a 24-hour period," said Ungco, who won an Academy Award in 2024 for the short film War Is Over. “A lot of what we do here is it's really a crazy 72-hour blur of just finding, I guess, the truth in the moment and finding camaraderie in people who are highly skilled, highly trained, highly intelligent.”
For Ungco, the mission is deeply personal. His grandfather, a lieutenant colonel and U.S. ally pilot in the Philippines, shaped his values of service and empathy for veterans. That legacy has helped guide his approach to these workshops and has seen countless lives changed by the films.
“It's really changed my whole mindset and what we do here as storytellers (...) You realize that you have this ladder to use it for someone else who's in a hole, who needs help, who needs something to grasp onto so that they can find and climb their way out of where they are, and that's the best thing that we do, I think,” said Ungco. “I always come back from a workshop a different person, and the first couple of years doing it, I would come back and just be like, all the things that I thought bothered me are trivial, all the commercial clients that drove me crazy don't matter. What matters is this.”
These films have provided a way to heal and express themselves in a universal medium without saying words, and have left a lasting impact both on and off the screen.
“I always like to say during these workshops, 'A film can't change your life, but a community can and always will,' so there's community that comes from obviously making the films, but then when you show the films, you're able to tap into people who they see something differently," said Ungco. “It's not like there's any feeling, like there's anything better in the world to do except for this workshop. This is why we're here. It doesn't matter how long we have to fly or how do we get here, like there's nothing like this."
Once the films are completed by the end of the weekend, many of these veterans have rediscovered their voices and now can use them to lift others. More importantly, they walk away knowing that they are not alone in their struggles.
"When I was thinking of the idea of the film, that's really the idea that I was thinking about; it's OK not to be OK, and when you need help, communication is the most powerful weapon," said Watson. "Reach out and get help.”
A public screening of the films is planned for mid-June in Billings. To view other short films made by the Patton Veterans Project film workshops, click here.
