What Happened at the Veterans Home

Nervy Girl Films This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 413.320.5553

Nervy Girl Films

Presents

A Laura Wetzler Film

“What Happened at

the Veterans Home?”

A new film by musician and first time writer/director/producer Laura Wetzler

Starring Sonya Joyner, Judith Nelson Dilday, Rydia Q. Vielehr, & Robin Burdulis

Award-Winner on the International Film Festival Circuit!

31 Official Selections/14 Awards!

“Powerful!” WBUR NPR Radio Boston

“An incredible film.” Larry Hott, WHMP Radio

Click here to watch the trailer

Film Press Kit

SELECT AWARDS

Official Selection in Tokyo, Rome, Venice, San Francisco, LA, NYC, & Boston

Winner Cannes World Film Festival

Best Screenplay, Paris

Best Humanitarian Film, Prague

Best Actress (Judith Nelson Dilday) Amsterdam

Best Actress (Sonya Joyner) Naples

Best Film & Special Jury Prize, Redwood

Best Feature Script, Palm Springs

Outstanding Achievement in Film, Massachusetts

Best Women’s Empowerment Film, LA

Best Short Film, Istanbul

Best Indie Film, Florence

Best Feature Film, Athens

and more!

FILM REVIEWS

“So creative…heartbreaking yet hopeful at the same time.”

Zydalis Bauer WGBY Public TV

“Cinema Pandemia at its best.”

Monte Belmonte, WRSI Radio

“What Happened at the Veterans Home? is a drama that tells a deeper truth. Beautifully crafted and performed, with characters, visuals and storyline that will resonate and be remembered long after the lights come up.”

Karen Skolfield, US Army veteran, Poet Laureate, Northampton, MA

“…the actors’ ability to channel a range of emotions — anger, disbelief, grief, fear and determination — straight to the camera carries the story.”

Steve Pfarrar, The Daily Hampshire Gazette

“A most impressive and important new film. What Happened at the Veterans Home? is a moving, compassionate look at one of the cruelest chapters of the first year of the Covid pandemic. Writer-Director Laura Wetzler brings a fresh eye and a big heart to this tale, told primarily by three compelling women narrators. Frank, understated, and direct, these women demand that their voices be heard. Initially, the three illustrate their stories with lyrical personal details and warm moments. By the end, the exhausted and angry survivors situate the tragedy within the vast scope of society’s many failures to protect those who have built and secured it.

The most ingenious aspect of the film is the personification of the coronavirus itself as an imp. This creative stroke provides a surprising contrast to the matter-of-fact main characters who bring us into their lives, and actually infuses this most serious of stories with welcome humor.

Beautifully shot, What Happened at the Veterans Home? is a film that fulfills some of the greatest functions of art: to help us understand what is happening in the now, to provoke us to change what happens in the future.

Dr. Madeleine Cahill, Prof. Film Studies, Westfield State University

FILM & FILMMAKLER LINKS

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15418312/

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm12699169/

https://filmfreeway.com/LauraWetzler

NEWS LINKS TO PRESS INTERVIEWS

https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2022/04/13/award-winning-indie-film-holyoke-soldiers-home

https://connectingpoint.nepm.org/what-happened-at-the-veterans-home-film

https://www.masslive.com/entertainment/2022/03/filmmaker-asks-what-happened-at-the-veterans-home

https://www.johnkruth.com/the-singer-songwriters-film-asks-what-happened-at-the-veterans-home/

https://www.wamc.org/news/2022-03-15/what-happened-at-the-veterans-home-to-premiere-at-the-academy-of-music

https://www.gazettenet.com/A-new-means-of-expression-Singer-songwriter-Laura-Wetzler-makes-film

https://wrsi.com/monte/cinemapandemia

https://whmp.com/podcasts/cinema-pandemia

The Story of Three Heroic Women Who Will Not Be Silenced

Shot in faux-documentary style, What Happened at the Veterans Home? is a 49 minute fiction film featuring three African-American women caught dead center in the nursing home pandemic tragedy: Gloria Michaels, (Sonya Joyner) a disabled Vietnam-era veteran; her daughter Gwen Michaels, (Rydia Q. Vielehr) a hospital nurse; and Mary Emmett, (Judith Nelson Dilday) a CNA worker at The Veterans Home, who insists on revealing the truth of what really went on inside to an inquiring reporter we never see.

The women share their personal experiences in a fictional institution directly with the audience in a series of powerful monologues. The four-character film also includes a vivid portrayal of the Covid virus itself (Robin Burdulis.)

The music score is by Laura Wetzler, with orchestration & production by George Wurzbach. Film veteran Keena Keel is a special advisor on the project.

Singer songwriter guitarist Laura Wetzler became a filmmaker in July 2020, when her just completed, one-act stage play, Disposable: The Old Veterans Home was unable to be staged for a theater audience due to the pandemic shutdown. Forty-five live concerts had been cancelled from her tour schedule, so the musician took the time to adapt her new play for film, and invited noted cinematographer Jared Skolnick to join her as Director of Photography and Editor, and James Hanaburgh as Sound Designer. Auditions and rehearsals with actors were held by zoom. The low budget indie was shot safely in only eight days in September 2020 in Western Massachusetts, in the towns of Florence, Greenfield, Holyoke, and Agawam. Editing and post-production was all done remotely through a shared film work platform. Unusual procedures for unusual times.

What Happened at The Veterans Home? is intended as a small act of defiant beauty. Created by a team of artists working together under difficult circumstances, the film amplifies the heroic voices of the people unheard and unseen behind the numbing nursing home death statistics. A fictional work based on factual reports, written in the middle of the pandemic leadership crisis, What Happened at The Veterans Home? is a call to action, a challenge to our priorities, and a celebration of the human spirit. It channels our profound grief and outrage. The film is dedicated to every person we have lost, and to every endangered worker and vulnerable resident.

Film Festival release: Fall 2021 / Commercial release: Summer 2022