HEROIC, the documentary The Age of Reconstruction has been waiting for, previews in London on June 24

One artist. Nine years. 25 tons of bronze. While the West debates how to rebuild, HEROIC proves it already has — steps from the White House.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, June 16, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- In 2015, while statues were being pulled from plinths across the Western world, Sabin Howard picked up a sculpting tool and began building the largest free-standing bronze relief in the Western hemisphere. HEROIC - the documentary that followed him every step of the way - will preview in London on June 24, at the ARC Conference: The Age of Reconstruction.

Art is not decoration. It is not sentiment. At its highest — in the hands of a Michelangelo, a Rodin, a Howard — it is civilization’s most unambiguous declaration of what it believes is worth remembering. The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship has convened over 200 of the world’s leading voices in London to ask one question: what does it take to rebuild? Sabin Howard spent nine years answering it. Not in a speech. Not in a paper. In 25 tons of bronze, 150 yards from the White House, honoring 116,000 Americans the nation had left uncommemorated for over a century.

For the ARC audience — those who believe that beauty is not peripheral to civilization but foundational to it — HEROIC is not a film about one sculptor. It is a film about what it looks like when a single human being refuses to let the Western tradition lose. It is the argument for reconstruction, made flesh. And it arrives in London at precisely the moment that argument needs to be seen, not just heard.

Shot over 4,000 hours across three continents by filmmaker and producer Traci L. Slatton, HEROIC: Sabin Howard Sculpts the National WWI Memorial is a nine-year cinematic odyssey — from Howard’s South Bronx studio to Weta Workshop in New Zealand to a fine arts foundry in Stroud, England. Howard pioneered an entirely new process, marrying classical hand-sculpting with cutting-edge photogrammetry, to meet a deadline set by a nation. What the camera captured over those nine years is more than process: it is loyalty and betrayal, a pandemic, a federal commission pushing back, copyright theft on two continents, and an artist who refused, at every turn, to make anything less than something that would outlast him. The result: 38 figures, 25 tons of bronze, and a composition — drawn from Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and bearing the structural imprint of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement — that compresses the full arc of war, sacrifice, and return into 58.5 feet of permanent art.

This is a film for those who understand that the health of a civilization can be read in what it chooses to make permanent. HEROIC does not ask whether beauty matters. It assumes the answer — and then shows you the blood, sweat, bureaucracy, and sheer human will required to prove it in bronze. For an audience already committed to the proposition that the West is worth rebuilding, this film is not a case to be made. It is a case already won, documented over nine years, cast in metal, and standing 150 yards from the seat of American power.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS
“We are living in a moment when the West has forgotten how to make things that matter. I spent nine years proving it still can. A Soldier’s Journey is not nostalgia — it is a declaration. Beauty is not dead. Craft is not dead. The obligation to honor those who gave everything is not dead. We just stopped demanding it of ourselves.”
— Sabin Howard, Master Sculptor

“HEROIC is not a film about one man making a sculpture. It is a film about what happens when a civilization decides something is worth the full cost of making it permanent. At a moment when we are asking whether the Western story can be rebuilt, this film answers: it already has been — in 25 tons of bronze, 150 yards from the White House. The question now is whether we have the courage to watch, and to demand the same of ourselves.”
— Traci L. Slatton, Director & Filmmaker, HEROIC

EVENT DETAILS
What: HEROIC — Special Preview Screening & Live Q&A
When: Wednesday, June 24, 2026 | 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM BST
Where: ARC Conference 2026, Olympia London, UK
Q&A: Traci L. Slatton, Director & Filmmaker | Charles Mostow, Sculptor & Assistant Director
Info: tracilslatton.com/SuperhumanFilm | IMDb: tt37183117

ABOUT A SOLDIER’S JOURNEY
A Soldier’s Journey is the sculptural centerpiece of America’s National WWI Memorial in Pershing Park, Washington, D.C. — the nation’s first permanent memorial to the 116,000 Americans who died in the Great War. The largest free-standing relief in the Western hemisphere, the work was unveiled September 14, 2024, attended by senators, dignitaries, and veterans’ organizations. Its 38 figures trace a single soldier’s journey from farewell to battlefield to return — Howard’s meditation on the cost of war, the resilience of the human spirit, and the sacred obligation of art to make sacrifice permanent.

ABOUT SABIN HOWARD
Sabin Howard is one of the foremost classical figurative sculptors of his generation. Born in New York City and raised between Manhattan and Torino, Italy, he came of age immersed in two worlds simultaneously: the Renaissance grandeur of Italian museums and the raw creative energy of New York in the 1960s and 70s. That collision — classical rigour and modern vitality — became the defining tension of his life’s work.

Howard trained at the Philadelphia College of Art (B.A., 1986) and earned his MFA from the New York Academy of Art (1995), before apprenticing in Rome under master sculptor Paolo Carosone. He returned to New York to teach at both alma maters for sixteen years, shaping a generation of classical artists while developing his own monumental vision. After 45,000 hours of working from life models in the studio, he created three heroic-scale works — Hermes, Aphrodite, and Apollo — that established him as a sculptor of international standing. His works are held in museum and private collections across the globe and have been reviewed by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The New Criterion, among more than fifty solo and group exhibitions worldwide. He is a board member of the National Sculpture Society.

The New York Times wrote: “Sabin Howard, a sculptor of immense talent, has created some of the last decade’s most substantive realistic sculpture. When viewing his works, visitors may be reminded of the time when Donatello and Rodin walked the earth.” The Smithsonian Magazine described him as “a concert of opposites” who “holds in perfect tension every imaginable trait of personality.” Howard won the National WWI Memorial design competition in 2016 and spent the following nine years creating A Soldier’s Journey — inventing an entirely new manufacturing process along the way to deliver, on deadline, what is now considered one of the most significant memorial sculptures of the modern era. More at sabinhoward.com.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Traci L. Slatton is an international bestselling author, award-winning filmmaker, and producer. As project producer and manager throughout the creation of the memorial, Slatton was inside the process from the first sketch to the final patina — on three continents, over nine years. No outside crew could have captured what she captured.

Her published works include the romantic dystopian After Series (Fallen, Cold Light, Far Shore, Blood Sky); the vampire suspense novel The Botticelli Affair; the historical novel Immortal (BantamDell); the non-fiction Piercing Time & Space (ARE Press); the survey of classical figurative sculpture The Art of Life co-authored with Sabin Howard (Parvati Press); the poetry collection Dancing in the Tabernacle; and her most recent novel, the WWII drama Broken — a raw, unflinching story of love and survival set against the war that followed the one now cast in bronze on the Washington Mall.

Charles Mostow, Sculptor and Assistant Director. A Grand Central Atelier-trained sculptor, Salmagundi Club award winner, and Art Renewal Center scholar, Charles worked by Howard’s side in the studio for the full duration of the memorial’s creation, from first figure to final unveiling in Washington, D.C. He joins director Traci L. Slatton for the Q&A as assistant director on the film.

ABOUT THE ARC CONFERENCE
The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) is an international community of thought leaders, statesmen, scholars, artists, and builders committed to a hope-filled vision for the future of Western civilization. ARC 2026, themed The Age of Reconstruction, convenes over 200 voices at Olympia London, June 23–25, 2026, around one question: what does it take to rebuild? HEROIC screens on the evening of June 24 as the conference’s closing day turns from analysis to action — a film that does not theorize about reconstruction but shows it, in real time, in bronze. More at arc-conference.com.

Michelle Czernin
EPEC Media Group, Inc.
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Join Sabin Howard, Traci L. Slatton, and Charles Mostow of a Special Screening & Live Q&A of the film at ARC Conference on Wednesday, June 24 at 6 PM BST

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