Semper Fi: Always Faithful
USA | 2011 | 75 min
When Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger lost his 9 year old daughter to a rare type of leukemia, he wondered why. When the first hint of evidence about polluted wells at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune surfaced, he feared he had his answer. But he needed proof. Using unclassified documents, military contacts, and other victims, he began his search for truth, justice, and healing. His intelligence, intuition and "Marine spirit" brings this eco-detective story to light as he discovers the true horror that the Pentagon is the nation’s single biggest polluter and the top-down cover-up is only the beginning. This dramatic, heart-breaking documentary is both a searing look at the military’s betrayal of its own and an emotional story of one man’s transformation into the activist he never imagined he’d become.
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DIR Tony Hardmon, Rachel Libert
CAST Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger, Denita McCall, Mike Partain, Thomas Townsend Won, 2011 Woodstock Film Festival – Best Documentary, Audience Award
Won, 2011 San Diego Film Festival – Best Documentary
Won, 2011 Tribeca Film Festival – Best Editing Documentary, Audience Award 2nd PlaceStories of the military experience and military life are more and more common, as millions of US citizens and their families live through the effects of America’s wars. Most of these current films focus on the experience of battle; Semper Fi: Always Faithful takes a different tack. Uncovering a decades long cover-up by the military regarding water contamination at military bases, this battle is fought in the halls of Congress and through the media, as one man, a former Marine, makes it his mission to reveal the true story of the cancer that killed his young daughter, and is affecting thousands of other military families who don’t even know they have been exposed to dangerous chemicals.
—Cara Mertes, Sundance Institute
