Just Announced Sundance Cinemas to screen WFF doc The Good Solider on Nov. 11

It’s always cool when a Wisconsin Film Festival movie makes the rounds, if nothing else because we can all feel like big-shots who got in early on something special. Sundance Cinemas' three Wednesday screenings of The Good Soldier definitely work on that level. Even more importantly, the documentary was one of the best movies The A.V. Club saw at the ’09 fest. The doc’s premise is simple: Follow five veterans from different generations and ask them what it means to be a good solider. Their answers are surprising, heartbreaking, and very hard to forget. And as a local tie-in, one of the five principals featured is Will Williams, a Vietnam veteran who lives in the area and founded the Madison Area Peace Coalition.

Here’s what our own Jason Albert had to say about The Good Soldier during The A.V. Club’s WFF live-blog coverage: “It took one seemingly simple question—What makes a good soldier?—and reduced the answer to its essence. That being, the ability to kill other human beings. Using the voices of veterans from WWII, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Iraq, each gave this exact same answer, and they all spoke not only of their guilt and regret, but also of how at some point during their time in the military they needed to kill. Their reasons were different, but the training that gave them the skills and permission was not. I found it both hard to watch and hard to turn away from, and I know I'll never look at the words ‘collateral damage' in the same way again. Really powerful stuff.”