What does it mean to heal? What does it actually take to find strength and resilience when your body, mind, and spirit have been challenged? That’s the central question in Heart of Invictus, the new five-episode limited series from Archewell Productions and Oscar-winning director Orlando von Einsiedel (Virunga, The White Helmets). Executive produced by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, the story follows six individuals on their healing journeys as they compete in the 2022 Invictus Games.
“The games don’t focus on what causes the injury,” the Duke of Sussex says in the trailer, “but really about recovery and how to be a part of a community again.”
Every two years, people from around the world who sustained injuries during military service are invited to compete in the Invictus Games. The international multisport event allows participants to recover through sports, but also foster a peer-to-peer support network of people with similar difficult experiences.
“The story of the Invictus Games is fundamentally a human story,” Invictus Games CEO Dominic Reid tells Tudum. “It’s about the individuals, it’s about the challenges they face, the service that they’ve given, and in every case the monumental obstacles that they’ve had to overcome as a result of their injuries.”
The term invictus means “undefeated” or “unconquered,” and the Games are meant to nod to the fighting spirit of those who make the conscious decision to move through their trauma and start a new chapter in their lives. The Games were founded by Prince Harry in 2014 — a veteran of the British Army himself, the Duke of Sussex wanted to create an opportunity to highlight the stunning mental and physical strength of the world’s former soldiers.
“We don’t call them athletes, we call them competitors — and we do that for a very specific reason,” Reid says. “This is about competing. It’s about joining in and participating… this is about allowing people the opportunity to compete. It’s important to keep it open for people who want to come and have a go. For many, just getting to the starting line can be their gold medal.”
The six people featured in the series come from all over the world, including competitors Tom Folwell from the United Kington, Yuliia “Taira” Paievska from Ukraine, Na Hyeongyoon from South Korea, Gabriel “Gabe” George from the US, and Kasper Holm Henriksen, a veteran of the Danish Army who uses bicycling to help manage his PTSD. Many of the competitors say that joining the Invictus Games was less about the competition and more about finding a sense of community with people who’ve been through similar experiences.
“The main reason why I joined the Invictus Games was because of the community and the possibility to rehabilitate through sport,” Henriksen tells Tudum. “I’ve learned a lot about myself by participating, and I don’t think that I would have come this far in my rehabilitation without the Invictus Games.”
The series also features Darrell Ling, a Canadian Navy veteran who also struggles with PTSD and extreme anxiety. Ling uses woodworking and other projects to center himself (in the series, Ling is able to gift Prince Harry one of his pieces), and he says that playing in the Invictus Games aligned him with like-minded people who knew exactly what he’d gone through and gave him confidence to compete.
“Everybody’s trauma is different, but we all have a lot in common. Lots of people don’t get what mental health [issues] are like until you live it,” Ling tells Tudum. “When you’re in with a bunch of people like Invictus community, everybody in that community gets it.”
All the stories in Heart of Invictus require a profound level of vulnerability to share, and the competitors do so with remarkable candor and grace. Like many of the other participants, Ling says one of his primary motivations for putting his story out there is to reach others who might be feeling the way he did.
“If someone is out there watching the series and they’re hurting in some way, I hope they realize there’s always hope,” Ling says. “And when we find hope, we can start working on growing as a human being.”
Heart of Invictus is available to stream now on Netflix.
It takes place in The Hague, Netherlands, where the 2022 Invictus Games were held.
Over five episodes, the limited series focuses on six individual competitors from six different countries on their road to the 2022 Invictus Games. We follow them as they prepare for the competition and share their experiences of serving in the military and how they’ve navigated the consequences of physical injury and PTSD since.
“They’re all very compelling human stories,” Reid says. “It’s about the character that they manifest and the extraordinary positive resolve and self-discipline that they bring to their own lives and to the lives of those around them. Even when it feels almost impossible.”
