What I Want You to Know

Filmmaker Catie Foertsch is an award-winning producer, director and editor who lives in greater Boston. In 2018 she was contacted by two post-9/11 veterans who were discouraged by how little the American public knew or seemed to care about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or their cost to the men and women who were fighting them, and who asked her to help them make a documentary film. What I Want You To Know premiered at the 2023 Maine International Film Festival, where it won the Audience Favorite Award. While many documentary films have been made about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most focus on a single person or platoon, a single battle or incident. What I Want You To Know is a broad accounting of the wars and an exploration of their costs and consequences, as told through interviews with veterans who served in combat roles in the Army and the Marines, in different ranks and specialties, in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both. Through stories told with courage and candor – stories that are usually only talked about in private with other veterans – they share their experiences during and after their deployments and paint a picture of the moral complexities and impacts of their wars, and of war itself. What I Want You To Know lays bare the extent of what war does to those who do the actual fighting, particularly with regard to moral injury, the profound psychological and emotional wound that many veterans carry from their wartime experiences.