Kim A. Snyder’s Newtown is one of the year’s must-see documentaries. It’s a powerful, smart, and honest look at the fallout from the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 26 people, including 20 children, dead. Now a trailer has gone online, and it’s a good representation of the film’s honesty, dignity, and commitment to telling the stories of the people of Newtown who were directly impacted by the horrors of that day.
As I said in my review from Sundance, while the documentary does note the politics of gun reform, it largely focuses on a community in grief and how it attempts to cope with that grief. This isn’t Bowling for Columbine or Under the Gun. This is a deeply human, incredibly heartfelt look at a community reeling from unimaginable tragedy, and it’s a documentary that demands to be seen.
Watch the Newtown trailer below. The film will be released in New York on October 7th, L.A. on October 14th, and then a nationwide Fathom Events screening on November 2nd.
Here’s the official synopsis for Newtown:
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.
