The Newport Beach Film Festival has crowned a documentary about the grueling, nine-year creation of America’s National WWI Memorial as an audience favorite, signaling that classical art and humanist storytelling still command attention on the big screen. Traci L. Slatton’s HEROIC: Sabin Howard Sculpts the National WWI Memorial took home the Audience Award for Best Art, Architecture + Design Feature at the 2026 festival, tying with Leica – A Century of Vision.
Traci L. Slatton’s documentary 'Heroic' captures Sabin Howard’s nine-year battle to create the National WWI Memorial sculpture. January 2027 digital release.
“HEROIC is not just a film about the making of a monument; it is a testament to what is required to create enduring art in the modern age,” said Slatton, who directed the film. The project follows sculptor Sabin Howard as he labored to produce A Soldier’s Journey, a 58-foot-long, 25-ton bronze relief that now anchors the National WWI Memorial in Washington, D.C. Freestyle Digital Media, a division of Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group, recently picked up digital distribution rights, with a January 2027 release planned.
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For cultural institutions worldwide—from the Vatican’s archives to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) and various international art academies—the film arrives as a statement about cultural memory and classical beauty. It documents what Slatton calls a modern renaissance: a return to painstaking, physical craftsmanship and the humanist ideals that once defined monumental art. The film captures Howard’s process in intimate detail, including his decision to use real combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan as live models, bringing authentic wartime experience into the faces of the World War I soldiers he sculpted.
Slatton herself played an unusual triple role on the project: director, project manager, and wife to the sculptor. That proximity gave her an unfiltered view of the years-long struggle, which involved federal design battles, pandemic-related shutdowns, and intense personal and professional tensions inside the studio. “Sabin and I were driven by a duty to the veterans who sacrificed everything, and to a global culture that is hungry for art that elevates our shared humanity,” Slatton said. “To see this resonate so deeply with audiences at Newport Beach is deeply satisfying. We can still build beautiful things. And the world is ready to embrace monumental storytelling once again.”
The scale of the achievement is hard to overstate: A Soldier’s Journey is the largest freestanding high-relief bronze sculpture in the Western Hemisphere, featuring 38 larger-than-life figures. The film positions the monument as a bold counterweight to post-modern fragmentation, returning to classical craftsmanship and narrative art.
Why it matters: In an era dominated by digital ephemera and fragmented media, HEROIC argues that the capacity for transcendent, generational art is still alive. For audiences and institutions alike, the film offers both a blueprint for reviving monumental storytelling and a reminder that beauty and human dignity remain worth fighting for.
For early screening access, press inquiries, or institutional exhibition requests, visit heroicdocumentary.com or contact the media representative below.
MEDIA CONTACT
Michelle Czernin von Chudenitz
EPEC Media
michelle@epecmedia.com | 310-600-0575
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Traci L. Slatton is an internationally bestselling author, director, and project manager. Her unique position at the intersection of literary storytelling, monumental art production, and documentary filmmaking provides an unmatched lens into the human cost of artistic creation.
Michelle Czernin von Chudenitz
EPEC Media
+1 310-600-0575
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