Telling Heavy Stories that Honor All

This is part of our Braving Healing platform, which is all about telling the stories of survivors of childhood sexual abuse and experts who work in the field. Each month, we’re producing a short film in our “Survivor Journey” series where we tell the story of an individual. (This is not the same as “Braving Together” films which explore a single topic discussed by several people.)

We worked with The Gatehouse in Toronto to connect with a number of survivors. Unlike the majority of our interviews, we did not know these folk in advance of interviewing. Sergio came into the room we were filming and you could feel the richness of his humanity. 

While true of all of our Survivor Journeys, Sergio helps bring attention to aspects of survivorship that we wanted to ensure we highlighted. This film helps tell the story of how holding in the trauma is difficult and the challenges survivors face as they explore what healing means to them.

The interviews where The Gatehouse had brought in folk for us to interview, we did not have much time with each person and subsequently no time for b-roll footage. This meant we had to explore more creatively how we could tell their story. We had gone out and captured some fall footage for our b-roll library and this was the perfect space to use it.