Reclaiming the night

18 MINUTES

In the wake of wars, a professor seeks to mend children’s deep traumas

For children living with extraordinary trauma, research shows that time simply doesn’t heal all wounds. Rather, if the trauma goes unaddressed, the worst moments of their lives will continue to reverberate, leaving them to detect threats even when they’re in safe environments. More than just painful, this post-traumatic stress leaves them at risk of falling behind in their education or dropping out of school altogether.

No one understands these difficult facts better than Jon-Håkon Schultz. As a professor of educational psychology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, he immerses himself in and teaches the latest research into childhood trauma. And, having developed techniques used by the Norwegian Refugee Council to help children traumatised by war and displacement, he frequently travels abroad, training educators to teach simple yet effective coping skills, like breathing exercises. Through these interventions, children learn to manage their overwhelming emotions, including post-traumatic nightmares, and are given a better chance of finishing their education.

Reclaiming the Night follows Schultz on a research trip from his university work in Tromsø, Norway to Beirut, Lebanon. There, Schultz meets with children displaced by war and the educators who’ve been trained to help them move forward. This includes a Syrian child who’s witnessed unspeakable acts of brutality committed by the Islamic State, and had her trauma exacerbated by the Port of Beirut explosion in August 2020.

In his moving short documentary, the British director Daniel Benjamin Wheeler, who is based in Beirut, captures childhood trauma as both a relatively new field of academic study and an all-too-common lived experience for many children around the world. In doing so, he also builds a nuanced portrait of Schultz as someone who must balance his drive to help war-traumatised children with his own wellbeing.

Director: Daniel Benjamin Wheeler

Producer: Amy Van Drunen

Cinematographer: Kacper Czubak

Explore more

Two people lying on a snowy road in winter clothing with a forested landscape in the background.
GRIEF

Frøydis faces an impossible problem – how to grieve a father she hated and loved

Directed by Frøydis Fossli Moe

A Miami Beach police car with flashing lights surrounded by people and photographers at night.

Gun world

Is it possible to feel grief and survivor’s guilt after a mass shooting that didn’t occur?

by Jess Keefe

Two scuba divers swimming underwater with sunlight filtering through the surface.

Exposure

Wracked with unknown fear, I’d never been able to sleep through the night. Then I went scuba diving

by Lindsay Lee Wallace

Silhouette of a person next to a glowing orange lamp in a dark room.

Discarded

The end of a friendship cracked me apart, triggering hidden memories – and helping me heal old wounds

by Antonia Malchik

A monochrome photo of a person with a shaved head looking down in low light, a tattooed teardrop visible near their eye.

Why it matters that trauma affects women and men differently

They are too often ignored, yet sex differences affect the kind of trauma people experience and the effect it has on them

by Klára Hanáková

Shadow of a person on crumpled paper in dark setting photo.

Sent to boarding school, a boy conjures up a friend to soothe his distress

A film by Tony Gammidge

Photo of a man sitting in a circle on a speckled background, focusing on an object in his hands, with a cosmic effect.

How small creatures helped James connect with the human-scale world

Directed by Spencer MacDonald

Blurry photo of a vibrant bar scene with a table of drinks, red lighting and indistinct figures moving around.

Living without mental imagery may shield against trauma’s impact

Discovering I have aphantasia helped me understand my response to being assaulted and why I wasn’t debilitated by PTSD

by J B Smith