Directed by Michael Epstein
Producer Michael Epstein
Producer Jonathan Yellen
Associate Producer Caleb Medders
Editors R.A. Fedde & Penny Elliott Hays
Cinematography Joel Shapiro
Music Joel Goodman
Visual Effects Tim D'Amico

On August 3rd, a Marine convoy drove down a desert road, vehicle upon vehicle of Marines traveling to the town of Haditha in northern Iraq. The men in the convoy, many of who slept standing up, were exhausted and in a daze, still shaken up by the deaths of six from their battalion at the hands of snipers, just two days before. Almost to the town's border, an Improvised Explosive Devise (IED) hit one of the Amphibious Armored Vehicle personnel carriers in the convoy's center. The huge blast blew the armored vehicle apart and ignited its load of fuel and explosives. Shouting through the fire and dust, Marines rushed to look for survivors, while dodging the ignited ammunition spontaneously combusting into the air. But the blast, violent enough to break the windows of cars 80 yards away, was too much for the amphibious assault vehicle, not designed for this kind of duty. Fourteen Marines died, eleven of them from Lima Company. It was the worst road side bomb of the Iraq War.

COMBAT DIARY: THE MARINES OF LIMA COMPANY is a documentary about the seven-month tour of duty of the 180 Marines of 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment's Lima Company in western Iraq. In just five months, 23 of Lima's Marines would die in combat, making the company one of the hardest hit units in the Iraq war. Through an astonishingly set of interviews, as well as a never-before-seen trove of video shot by the Marines of Lima Company, COMBAT DIARY presents the truest, hardest, most human view of the war in Iraq.

Almost every Marine in Lima Company went to war with a video camera--and those who didn't have a camera when they got to Iraq had one by the time they came home. They shot everything--playing around in their barracks, firefights, video letters home--and entrusted it all to Viewfinder Productions.

Viewfinder wove this footage, with candid interviews of the Marines reflecting back on their deployment, and cinema verite footage of family members who lost their husbands, their sons, into a fabric entirely seamless and entirely new.

Available film excerpts:

Hit

Introduction

Combat Diary Reviews:

a masterful documentary . . . pitch perfect.
  --Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times

the best in a newly crowded field of documentaries on Iraq.
  --Rod Norland, Newsweek

the strongest offering of the extended Memorial Day weekend.
  --Charlie McCollum, San Jose Mercury News

"Diary" is surely a welcome reminder of what true "reality programming" looks like.
  --Brian Lowry, Variety

A-
  --Entertainment Weekly

'Combat Diary' is just that: raw, highly personal
  --Alessandra Stanley, New York Times

an emotion-charged chronicle . . .excellent.
  --Mike Duffy, Detroit Free Press

a stark, honest and gripping portrait of idealism tempered by the pain of brothers lost in war.
  --Rob Colenso, The Marine Corps Times