Mark Arnett did not exactly set out to become an award-winning documentary filmmaker. The Arizona lawyer didn't even plan on being a filmmaker. All he knew was that he had a compelling story that he thought needed to be told.

Arnett had always known his father served in World War II, "but he never talked about it. None of them did."

In May 1994 he accompanied his father to a reunion in the Netherlands. As he stood in the field where his father's plane, the Boomerang, was shot down by the Germans 50 years ago to the day, he thought, "I have to document this story. I hired a local news crew to come and take video. Then I got home with all this tape, and wondered what to do. That's when I started learning," Arnett says.

The first thing he realized was "that I wanted to make a documentary for people like myself who don't like documentaries."

The second thing was that "as a member of the spoiled, pretentious and ungrateful baby boomer generation" he did not appreciate his father's story for what it was. "So, I started the film in a way that baby boomers can relate to, I made it about myself."

What he didn't know was that he was about to embark on a 14-year journey that would not only take him away from that "self-centered vision" but also resulted in a DVD that has resonated with audiences all over.

"Baby Boomerang" won the Silver Ace Award at the 2009 Las Vegas International Film Festival, won Best Documentary at the 2009 "Gone With the Wind Festival" in Hollywood, was an official selection at both the 2009 Phoenix Film Festival and the 2009 LDS Film Festival and at an independent film festival in Tampa and, most recently, was named "Best Documentary USA" at the International Christian Film Festival in Wales.

At its heart is the story of his father, Charles Arnett, a Mormon boy from Arizona who as a young man did not want to go to war. When it became inevitable, not only did he join up but he went to flight school to become a pilot and ended up flying B-24 bombing missions over Germany.

Charles' faith and fortitude came into play on one fateful morning when he realized, as he was giving the pre-flight prayer his crew asked him to give, that they would not be coming back. The plane was, indeed, shot down over Holland; one crew member was killed and the rest spent the next 11 months as POWs, moved from one prison to another as the Germans scrambled in the waning days of the war.

In the end, the POWs were freed, Charles came home to marry the girl who had pinned his wings on him in pilot training and, as did the other members of his generation, settled down to build a better world for his children.