Retired U.S. Army Capt. Luis Carlos Montalván once received some sage advice from an old sergeant of his.

“He said, ‘Smile, be nice. But always have a plan to kill everyone in the room,’” Montalván recalls.

Those words appeared in the documentary film Buried Above Ground, a riveting look at three survivors of post-traumatic stress disorder trying to exist with the mental and physical effects of the trauma they experienced. For Montalván, that trauma was the result of war. For a woman named Erundina, the trauma came from an abusive childhood and surviving domestic violence as an adult. For Ashley, the trauma resulted from barely surviving Hurricane Katrina.

Three people, three different sets of circumstances, all with the same outcome: How do you cope with what you’ve seen, done or experienced?

Filmmaker Ben Selkow spent six years following his subjects, and screened his 2015 documentary at the Carmel International Film Festival. He’s trying to change people’s mindset about trauma and, in partnership with the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Selkow is bringing his film back to Monterey County for two screenings this month...

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