CRISIS HOTLINE: VETERANS PRESS 1
HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET
Premiering on Veterans Day, this new documentary pulls you in from the opening seconds, and never lets go. Set at the country’s one solely dedicated Veterans Crisis Line, in upstate New York, it films responders as they pick up calls and speak to veterans, often trying to persuade them not to commit suicide. The callers are not identified, and we never hear their voices on the other end of the line – only the words of the Crisis Line workers, as they try to simultaneously gather information, dispatch assistance and calm and help the callers who have reached out for help. There’s never a sense that anyone is acting differently because the cameras are present, because the stakes are too high for that. And director Ellen Goosenberg Kent, who also directed HBO’s superb Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq, honors her subject by crafting a documentary that is intense and emotional without being at all exploitive. And for the record: the Veterans Crisis Line phone number is 1-800-273-8255, and it receives calls 24 hours a day, every day of the year.