New Film “Land” Explores Grief and Trauma

ROBIN WRIGHT, ACTRESS/DIRECTOR: Well, mainly because it came into my lap about three years ago, when, we were all experiencing and others experiencing on another level loss and tragedy during these random shootings that were going on almost biweekly. And I just felt like this message was so timely about human resilience and the need for human connection to allow one to heal, and especially this last year, what we have all been through, the disconnected nature of the pandemic.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Especially this year, yes. ‘

WRIGHT: Yes, exactly.

AMANPOUR: You see, I’m sitting here sort of curled up because I don’t want to do a spoiler alert. And the actual trauma that you have suffered is not revealed until the very end of the film. And so I’m not actually going to say what it is. But you do refer to shooting, the pandemics of shooting. And, clearly, there’s been a lot of trauma suffered in the United States and around the world. Let me just ask Dr. Gordon, who I know, and he remembered, that we have met in very traumatic situations about Gaza, and some of the victims there. So, Dr. Gordon, what did you — what did you have to do, what was your skill needed on this film in terms of trauma and grief adviser and expert?

DR. JAMES GORDON, AUTHOR, “TRANSFORMING TRAUMA”: Well, thank you, Christiane. It’s nice to be with you again, and in these circumstances as well. I think that Robin and her screenwriter, Erin Dignam, had a very deep and powerful intuitive sense of how damaging and disruptive trauma is, and also an intuitive sense that trauma does come to all of us. So, what I did is really to encourage them to follow their best instincts. And Robin and I did some couple hours of role-playing, and really encouraging what she was ready to do already, is to go into the depths of suffering and loneliness, and to feel the exquisite vulnerability of Edee, of the character, and at the same time — and I think I encouraged this as well — to look for the sources of strength that would bring her through this terrible trauma. And I think you see that in the film, that you have a sense that nature is going to support her and she’s going to embrace it. And I really was there to just encourage her superb instincts about what trauma is and the fact that there is a way through. And so that — I know that from my experience of working during and after wars and after climate- related disasters. So — and she’s — it’s a pleasure. It’s been a — was a — has been and is a pleasure to know Robin and to work with her, because she’s so tuned in and so sensitive to what’s actually going on inside her and inside the character.