Lioness

About the Project

Lioness is a documentary film about Army support soldiers who became the first women in American history to be sent into direct ground combat. Without sufficient training but with a commitment to serve as needed, these young women ended up fighting in some of the bloodiest counterinsurgency battles of the Iraq war. Lioness makes public, for the first time, this hidden history.

Told through intimate accounts, journal excerpts, archival footage, as well as interviews with military commanders, the film follows five Lioness women who served together for a year in Iraq. With captivating detail, this probing documentary reveals the unexpected consequences that began by using these Army women to defuse tensions with local civilians, but resulted in their fighting alongside Marine combat units in the streets of Ramadi. Together the women's candid narratives describing their experiences in Iraq and scenes from their lives back home form a portrait of the emotional and psychological effects of war from a female point of view.

The Lioness outreach and audience engagement strategy is based on the premise that Americans need to understand what is being asked of our servicewomen on the ground in Iraq so we can know how to help them when they come home.

The filmmakers took the film on a nine month tour and their work still continues today. They visited women veteran health care facilities across the country, including Gainesville, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, San Antonio, Chicago, Boston, Long Beach, San Diego, Little Rock, Portland, ME, and White River Junction, VT. In addition, they took the film to a number of military posts, both Army and Marine, including Camp Lejeune, NC, Fort Bragg, NC, Fort Hood, TX, Fort Riley, KS, Fort Leavenworth, KS, Quantico Marine Base, VA, US Army War College, Carlisle, PA, and Fort Lewis, WA. These posts are all places where active duty women are being trained to do Lioness work or where policies about military personnel are generated.

Through their work, they connected two groups who typically are disconnected: active duty servicewomen and the American public. This kind of civil-military dialogue is helping to bridge the gap between a civilian majority with little or no knowledge of the military, and the small minority (1%) of the population who volunteer to serve in our armed forces.

The Fledgling Fund Impact

The Fledgling Fund was pleased to join with Chicken & Egg Pictures and Impact Partners to provide post-production funding for this film which we believe tells a compelling and important story that all Americans need to understand.  We are also pleased to have provided support for its audience engagement campaign which educated the general public, government officials, and health care providers, who work with veterans, active duty women, and families, about the “unexpected” things that are now routinely asked of female troops so that they can provide appropriate support for them upon their return home.