‘Searching for Home’
features  Maine families

PORTLAND — The University of Southern Maine will host the East Coast premiere of a feature film documentary about soldiers’ wartime trauma and their sometimes rocky transition home.

It film is titled “Searching For Home: Coming Back from War.”

The 106-minute documentary — portions of it were filmed in Maine with families — will be shown for the public on Oct. 3 at USM’s Hannaford Hall in the Abromson Community Education Center on the Portland campus. An invitation-only reception will be held at 6:30 p.m. and the screening will begin at 7:30 p.m. A Q&A discussion with Mainers from the production and director Eric Christiansen will follow.

For Christiansen, the event will be a kind of homecoming.

“Maine, honestly, was the heart of this film,” said Christiansen, who is based in Valencia, Calif. “Maine’s like a big family.”

Among the Maine veterans he spoke with for the movie were Brandon Deaton of China and Michael Payeur of Biddeford. Both were wounded by improvised explosive devices in Iraq and suffered physical and emotional wounds.

Pam Payeur, Michael’s mother and the director of the Wounded Heroes Program of Maine, hopes the film will help people understand the price of war paid by the individuals who serve and their families.