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Every day, thousands of people deliberately cut, burn and mutilate their bodies in a desperate attempt to relieve anxiety and pain. With an estimated two million self-injurers in the United States alone, and countless more around the world, it is a disturbing phenomenon that has reached epidemic proportions. Male and female, young and old, rich and poor, famous and ordinary, 'cutters' harm themselves not as an act of suicide, but as a way to express their pain when words will not speak for them. But what could possibly motivate someone to alter or destroy their body? Written on the Body will explore that question, and seek out the larger truth at work within the riddle of self-harm: To make sense of that which appears to be senseless. These individuals do not have diseases. They have stories. Skin tells a story, and it is through their skin that these individuals tell theirs. Told 'in their own words' through formal interviews and video diaries (shot by the subjects themselves), the film will profile both male and female self-injurers. The subjects range in age from teens to mid-thirties, from an attractive, private school-educated college girl in Phoenix, Arizona, to a mother with a successful career in Denver, Colorado, to a highly-articulate, noted memoirist from Australia who describes her ten year battle with self-injury, to a 31 year-old ex-con in Chicago who survived his own horrific act of self-injury when he literally "blew himself away" with a sawed-off shotgun, to a 25 year-old Seattle girl who describes her life-long struggle with self-injury as "a need," and the feeling that follows a cutting episode as being "able to breathe again." These and other stories are powerfully and eloquently told in Written on the Body. Often obscured by superficial and sensationalized media coverage, Written on the Body will take an 'insiders' look at the true nature of the disorder, breaking down stereotypes, and stripping away the mysterious aura that surrounds this disturbing behavior. These intimate, heart-rending portraits will look beyond the surface injuries to the underlying, and often paradoxical causes of why millions of people "hurt themselves as a way to make themselves feel better," and, in so doing, pull back the veil on one of society's last taboo subjects. When Princess Diana revealed in an extraordinary BBC interview in 1995 that she had been a 'cutter' (in addition to wrestling with an eating disorder), she described how she intentionally cut her arms and legs, explaining, "You have so much pain inside yourself that you try to hurt yourself on the outside because you want help." Celebrities like Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie and Christina Ricci (among others) have all publicly described their experiences with self-harm. The film will touch on these stories, showing how self-injury affects people from all walks of life, cutting across the entire social and economic spectrum of society. Far from glamorizing the subject, Written on the Body will explicitly explore the dangers of self-injury, which can often consume an individual's life, taking a powerful, addictive-like hold over them. Because of the 'closeted' and deeply shameful nature of this behavior, most self-injurers feel isolated, and are often reluctant to 'come out' and seek help. The film will address this problem, and discuss specific treatment options and resources available so that self-injurers, and their families and loved ones, feel empowered to openly discuss the problem, and to seek help. These stories of struggle and survival give voice to the extraordinary capacity of these individuals to confront and overcome their battles with self-injury. At the same time, they challenge our perceptions of this much-misunderstood behavior by revealing the deeper meaning of these individuals' actions, helping us as a society to better understand this new 'language of pain,' and, at the same time, offer help and hope to those living with it.