The trailer for “Blood Stripe” plays out much like the film’s main protagonist: quietly. Viewers are guided not by dialogue, but rather by action and accompanying music. Our protagonist cannot voice her struggle; she simply lives it day by day.
Written by star Kate Nowlin and director Remy Auberjonois (“The Good Wife”), “Blood Stripe” follows a marine sergeant who returns home from her third tour in Afghanistan. Her “physical scars and unseen wounds” eventually lead her to run to the woods of Minnesota. But it soon becomes clear that “she cannot outrun her own heart of darkness and the pristine wilderness eventually becomes fraught with peril.”
Per the film’s official synopsis, the “Blood Stripe” team “deftly feminizes the warrior archetype while building the story to an emotional crescendo, reminding us of how little we understand post-traumatic stress beyond its definition.” This raw portrait of PTSD aims to show “war’s cost to the individual and society.”
“Blood Stripe,” which won the U.S. Fiction Award at the 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival, opens in New York September 29. Its LA run begins October 13.