When the worst horror imaginable happens to your community, how do you emotionally rebuild? How do you embrace your neighbor, knowing the pain that’s seared into their soul? How does one come to a place of resolution, if ever? With Newtown, director Kim A. Snyder takes a humanistic approach in exploring this recovery in the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting of schoolchildren in United States history, which left 26 people, including 20 children, dead.
I said in my review from Sundance, “Newtown is not much interested in going down the rabbit hole of proposed motivations of the never-audibly-named killer, or even the horrific specifics of the timeline of what occurred on that dreadful day in December 2012. Rather, the documentary’s foundation is formed by the acute emotional response to the event and its ripple effects that will be felt for a lifetime throughout (and beyond) this community of around 25,000 people. Each conversation, whether it be with families of those who lost children or the first responders at Sandy Hook Elementary School, is attuned to their internal grappling with the unfathomable loss.”
Ahead of a release in NY on October 7 and LA on October 14, then a nationwide Fathom Events screening on November 2, check out the first trailer below.
There are no easy answers in NEWTOWN – no words of compassion or reassurance that can bring back the 20 children and six educators who lost their lives during the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Instead, Snyder gives us exclusive access into the lives and homes of those who lost loved ones, and others in the community who have been indelibly changed by the events. Each person, be it a parent, school nurse, or state police officer, tries in their own way to make sense of their loss, as well as confront our nation’s inability to quell gun violence in even the most peaceful of communities. NEWTOWN bears witness to their profound grief and allows it to reverberate within our collective conscience – exploring what happens to a community after it becomes the epicenter of a national discussion, and what is still left to cope with after the cameras leave. 85m.
Newtown hits NY on October 7 and LA on October 14, then a nationwide Fathom Events screening on November 2.