There’s a question every soldier eventually faces, and almost nobody talks about it while they’re still in: who are you when the uniform comes off for the last time?
For most of a military career, the answer to “who am I?” is handed to you. You’re your unit. Your trade. Your team. The standard you hold and the people you hold it with. Then one day, by choice, by injury, by time, it ends. The gates close behind you, and the thing that organised your whole life isn’t there anymore.
Pilgrim, a short film by Thomas Greenaway, sits inside that question for fifteen unflinching minutes. It features 'Dan', a veteran of the New Zealand Special Air Service, and it does something rare for a film about special forces: it isn’t about the missions. It’s about what happens after them.
No third party narrator. No dramatisation. Just 'Dan'.
The film follows 'Dan' into the mountains of New Zealand, and if you’ve seen that country’s high country on screen before, you still won’t be prepared for how it’s shot here. The cinematography is spectacular, but it never feels like decoration. The vast, indifferent scale of the landscape becomes part of the story: one man, walking, working out who he is now.
Over it all runs 'Dan’s' voice. Not an interview chopped into soundbites, just a quiet, personal reckoning with service, identity, loss, and the slow, deliberate work of building a life with purpose on the other side of the badge. He speaks the way operators actually speak: plainly, without self-pity, and with the kind of honesty that’s only possible when a man has genuinely done the work.
That’s what gives Pilgrim its power. It doesn’t dramatise the transition out of service. It doesn’t need to. Anyone who has lived it, or watched someone they love live it, will recognise every beat.
Why we’re sharing it
Platatac has served the military community for a long time. Our gear goes out the door to serving soldiers, but a huge part of our family is on the other side of that line now, veterans of Australian, New Zealand, United States, United Kingdom, Canadian and allied forces all over the world.
And here’s the truth our community understands better than most: the hardest operation many of us will ever run is the transition home. Selection has a training program. Deployment has a work-up. Getting out? You’re largely on your own.
That’s why films like this matter. The comments under Pilgrim on YouTube tell the story - servicemen and women, veterans of multiple nations, and their families, saying some version of the same thing: this is my story, and I’ve never heard anyone say it out loud before. The right story at the right time can do what no pamphlet, program or well-meaning conversation can: it can make someone feel less alone, and show them there’s a path forward.
To be clear, we have no commercial stake in this film. We’re sharing it because it’s excellent, because it’s true, and because somebody in our community needs to see it today.
Watch it properly
Pilgrim deserves better than a phone speaker on a train. Find a quiet fifteen minutes. Put your headphones on, open it on the big screen. Watch it start to finish.
Then, if it lands with you the way it landed with us, do one thing: send it to a mate who’s getting out, or who got out years ago and went quiet. You know the one.
Watch Pilgrim — Life After the NZSAS, free on YouTube.
Film by Thomas Greenaway. Follow his work on YouTube or follow him on Instagram.
