Mitchell Tepper
Independent Filmmaker
Other Roles: Director, Producer
Areas of Focus: Documentaries
Website: https://www.newday.com/films/love-after-war-saving-love-saving-lives
Biography
Dr. Mitchell Tepper, Director, Producer, and Writer, is a sexologist who has been living a full life with spinal cord injury for over 40 years. He has long been personally and professionally dedicated to ending the silence around sexuality and disabilities. Dr. Tepper has been working with wounded veterans since speaking at the Road to Recovery Conference for wounded veterans in 2006. Through spearheading the Wounded Troops and Partners: Supporting Intimate Relationships Conference in Washington DC in 2008, he was successful in getting the issue of sexual health and intimacy for wounded warriors on the national radar. He assisted the Bob Woodruff Foundation in organizing their High Impact Collaboration Conference, From Injury to Intimacy, in 2014. He has been instrumental in the implementation of couple’s retreats within the VA system and in training members of the Sexual Health and Intimacy Workgroup at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Dr. Tepper has published peer reviewed articles in medical and sexual health journals on comprehensive sexual health care for catastrophically injured warriors.
Films
Love After War: Saving Love, Saving Lives (2021)
Role: Director
Love After War: Saving Love, Saving Lives is a story of injured veterans, true love, physical and emotional pain, coming home, and sexual healing. This feature-length documentary tells the stories of five couples in which at least one of the partners has sustained an injury during active duty. In four of our couples, one partner has suffered catastrophic, combat-related injuries. For one of the couples, both partners have suffered injuries in the military. Two of the veterans were young and single when they sustained their injuries; two were partnered and married each other; two were married (one of those were newlyweds). In each case, these young men and women volunteered to defend their country and came home to realize their physical and psychological trauma has affected their intimate lives.
The documentary delves deep into their emotional and physical intimate lives and the journey from being sexually devastated to happily in love in-the-face-of their physical and psychological wounds. The stories are painful, but viewers will witness how they are winning their personal battles for love. Each couple expresses their hope that their story will help future wounded warriors. These couples have exhibited sexual resiliency in the face of grievous combat-related injuries on their journey to restoring emotional openness and physical closeness.
We are grateful for the generous support of our sponsors:
