Now Return Us to Normal

Streaming video - 2021

In this healing personal essay documentary, a filmmaker and her fellow classmates confront the trauma brought on by their years at a behavior modification boarding school. At 16-years-old, Leslie Koren was struck by severe clinical depression and seemingly overnight, transformed from a socially active and healthy teenager to someone who was unable to function. Overwhelmed and leery of institutional options, Koren's parents sent her to Oakley School, an isolated free form boarding program for "problem youth" near Park City, Utah. While she went to Oakley voluntarily, most of her fellow classmates were there against their wishes. Twelve years after graduating from Oakley, Koren experiences a post-traumatic attack as buried memo...ries flood to the surface. Pressing ahead to alleviate her crippling PTSD and shame about her time at a behavior modification boarding school, she starts asking questions for which there most likely will be no answers, attempting to connect the dots of her disjointed memories. Reuniting with alumni for the first time in over a decade, Koren intends to piece together their perspectives and weave them into a tapestry that communicates the difficulty of assimilating this experience into their adult lives. Through this process, like many with PTSD, she wonders if she will ever be a reliable narrator of her own story and if not, how much does that matter? more