Co-produced and directed by Heather Courtney
This low-key documentary begins with all the hallmarks of a working class drama but unfolds into the kind of slower-moving “hippie” film initially disdained by its unlikely heroes, a crew of buddies from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The combat footage is startling (director Courtney embedded with the platoon to capture it), but most of the blood and guts are spilled off camera. Still, this doesn’t mean no prisoners are taken.
Lured by a $20,000 signing bonus and the promise of college tuition, Dom signed up for the National Guard. His buddy Cole and several others followed, and no surprise, the whole lot got shipped off to Afghanistan. Inevitably, these amiable young guys were radically altered by their time overseas.
As the film progresses it’s difficult not to wonder as much about where soldiers go to as where they come from. 
Their entire mission involved sweeping for IEDs. Far from fighting for freedom, as they’d originally hoped, their days were spent trying to avoid getting themselves and other troops blown up. In the process they connected with local people and began to see the humanity of the enemy, and ultimately to question the point of the entire exercise.
Now a couple of years later, the president their families voted for in hopes he would end this war has still not done so, and these young men—arguably some of the luckier veterans—have been left to pick up the pieces of their lives, while they worry what is literally left of their trauma-affected brains.
If you’ve been wondering why the U.S. went into Afghanistan, and why we continued to stay there, Where Soldiers Come From won’t provide any answers. But it does illustrate quite clearly some of the consequences.
