A Navy SEAL Vet Relived Iraq War Trauma in ‘Warfare’ (Exclusive)

• Navy SEAL veteran Ray Mendoza co-wrote and co-directed the new A24 movie Warfare with filmmaker Alex Garland
• The movie is Mendoza and his fellow soldiers’ detailed recreation of a real-life 2006 Iraq War mission gone wrong 
• Mendoza tells PEOPLE that the movie was a chance to honor his comrade and friend Elliott Miller, who suffered a traumatic brain injury that wiped out his memory of the incident

Ray Mendoza has dreamed about the harrowing events depicted in his new movie Warfare for almost 20 years. In one version of the recurring dream, his Navy SEAL comrade and friend Elliott Miller doesn’t suffer a traumatic brain injury or lose a leg. 

“He got up and we laughed it off,” the filmmaker recalls to PEOPLE. “And then you wake up and it’s not a nice dream, it’s a nightmare. Because it’s not true.”

A24’s Warfare (now in theaters), co-written and co-directed by the Navy SEAL veteran and Annihilation filmmaker Alex Garland, reflects firsthand accounts of the real-life 2006 Iraq War mission Mendoza, Miller and their platoon experienced together. In the two-decade War on Terror, “this is not the only story worth telling,” says Mendoza. But his “thorough understanding” of the incident provided the filmmakers an opportunity to do what few war movies have done before: painstakingly immerse audiences in the details of modern combat, almost in real time.

Making Warfare also offered Mendoza a more personal catharsis: while he has continued to process the events of the November 2006 incident amid the Battle of Ramadi, Miller has no recollection of it. Injured by an IED, the former sniper now uses a wheelchair and has lost his power of speech, communicating through a text-to-speech program. 

“We all wanted this story for Elliott,” says Mendoza of his surviving platoon members. The seed for Warfare was planted when Mendoza, working as a Hollywood stunt man choreographing gun fight sequences after retiring from the Navy, realized filmmaking was a tool that could fill in Miller’s memories. 

“I quickly discovered that this could potentially be a visual medium for him,” explains Mendoza. And while he didn’t think such an exercise “would ever be on this scale” of a narrative feature film, working with Garland on the set of 2024 hit Civil War changed that. 

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Warfare ends with a dedication to Miller and photos of the real-life soldiers — some whose faces are blurred to maintain anonymity — alongside their corresponding cast members, including Will Poulter, Kit Connor and Charles Melton. Joseph Quinn portrayed Joe Hildebrand, who was also gravely injured during the mission, while bringing Mendoza to life was D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, who the filmmaker-vet says “had the right mindset” in conveying his experience.

Miller is played by Cosmo Jarvis, who met his real-life counterpart on the movie’s set (a moment also captured in the credits sequence). “His gear, everything matched the same,” Mendoza remembers with a laugh. Miller “was just in awe. And he kind of giggled, which means… ‘Holy s—, that guy looks like me.’”

Having Miller on set while filming Warfare’s most harrowing moments couldn’t help but be emotional, adds Mendoza. The pivotal scene after the IED explosion, when Woon-A-Tai as Mendoza pulls Jarvis as Miller back into the besieged house, reminded Mendoza of the “loneliest” moment of his life. Concussed and lugging Miller’s body through the smoke, “there were regrets. Things like, ‘I should have worked out harder. I should have ran more.’ I just remember [thinking], ‘We’re going to get shot in the street because I can’t drag him fast enough.”

One particular take that was “too perfect” brought the IED aftermath to vivid life again for Mendoza — and, for the first time, for Miller, who was watching behind the camera. “He started to get emotional,” recalls Mendoza. “It wasn’t like an outright cry… it was this fragile whimpering.”

Mendoza called cut and excused himself from the set, he says, prompting Garland to take over. “I hadn’t cried in a really long time,” he admits. “Those demons finally caught me. I’d been running from them for a while.”

Co-writing and co-directing Warfare was Mendoza’s chance to exorcise those demons with the help of several members of his platoon. Traumatized military veterans don’t tend to want to revisit or relive their traumas, he says, but telling Miller’s story onscreen enabled an unprecedented kind of collective healing. Without the film, says Mendoza, “I don’t think I would be where I’m at any other way.”

Warfare is in theaters now.