newtown-posterThere are no easy answers in Kim Snyder’s remarkable documentary 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 on December 14, 2012. 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. I sat down with Kim Snyder in Los Angeles to talk about her breathtakingly poignant film.

Danny Miller: It’s so moving the way the families in the film open up to you about this unspeakably horrible thing that happened in their lives. I’m guessing that it was a process to build that level of trust? 

kimsnyderKim A. Synder: We had a LOT of off-camera conversations before any film was shot. I never had a fixed agenda about what this film could be so we talked about the different things that we could do in a long-form documentary. Why do it at all? What would be the point? We talked about how there has never really been a portrait of the collective grief of an entire community and how helpful that could be.

Were you always clear that you didn’t want this to be a film about gun control per se?

I was as concerned about the issue of gun violence as much as anybody, but I knew that I didn’t want to make an overtly political advocacy film. That was never at the forefront of what was driving us. Together with the family members and people in the community we looked at the ways in which this film could be a good thing to have out in the world. We decided to explore that together over time. I made it clear from the beginning that they were leading, I wasn’t going to make them go anywhere they didn’t want to go.

And I assume you told them that they could stop the filming at any time if they suddenly couldn’t handle it?

That happened all the time. Or we’d get something on camera and someone would say, “You know, I talked to my wife and she’s terribly uncomfortable that I told you these things.” We were very respectful of that. I was always conscious of my boundaries as a filmmaker — I’m not a trauma expert, I have no training in that field. I did talk to several experts, though, and they told me, “They have to live with this reality every day, they know their own boundaries, or if they don’t, they learn them quick.” So we all developed a very strong mutual trust.

And you knew from the start that you never wanted to talk about Adam Lanza in this film?

Yes. We never name the shooter in the film, that was a deliberate decision by me and my team. I felt that it wouldn’t be the truthful perspective of these people to give him a lot of thought. I don’t even say that out of rage for what he perpetrated — it’s more that they truly didn’t have the bandwith to deal with anything more than what was in front of them as they were going through the trajectories of trauma and grief. When the priest says, “Our foundation got cracked and we’re not sure how wide that crack is going to get,” it’s that crack that the film is about. What I think is ultimately hopeful about the film is to see what comes out of such brokenness. I’m not suggesting that there’s any “silver lining” to such a tragedy, there isn’t, but it’s like what we saw after 9/11 — there are all these noble and amazing displays of grace and strength. I think the people that I got to know in Newtown are truly remarkable individuals but having said that, I think that we all have this capacity that we may not be aware of to really step up when we need to.

Do you find some people trying to politicize the film more than you’re comfortable with?

Look, despite my strong desire to not make this into an advocacy film, it’s impossible to tell this story without talking about what’s happening with gun violence in this country. I think of that character in the play The Normal Heart about the AIDS epidemic who says, “All my friends are dying, why doesn’t anyone seem to care?” I remember Mark Barden, the father of Daniel who was killed, saying something that isn’t in the final film. He talked about how it was too late for them, but that they wanted to do anything they could to help other families not have to experience what they went through. They are all so genuine in wanting to pay it forward. And if they have the strength to go out in the world with this attitude, how can we not join forces with them and get out of any place of denial that we’re in?

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And the bottom line is that this isn’t — or at least should not be considered a political issue.

Exactly. As many people have said, the slaughter of schoolchildren is not a political issue, it’s a human one. There are two things that I hope this film contributes to: first, to try to shift this conversation out of his horribly polarized political space it’s in and put it in the humanitarian space where it belongs as a public health crisis, and second, to break through this sense of demoralized powerlessness.

Yeah, you always hear people say, “Well, if nothing is going to happen after first graders and murdered in their classroom, then nothing is ever going to change.”

Yes, you hear that a lot, but it’s not true! Most Americans today agree that something needs to change. We’ve been traveling with the film and these parents for a long time now and we can see the conversation changing a lot even though it’s not necessarily hanging on one piece of stymied federal legislation. But we see it happening on the local level, the state level, with doctors and teachers and clergy and faith leaders standing up in outrage and asking why we need these semi-automatic assault weapons in the hands of civilians. This film is not in any way about any kind of threat to the Second Amendment, it’s not even about taking on the NRA. It’s simply to say that we’ve reached a crisis point. We need to look at it, we need to feel it, and we need to have each other’s backs.

Newtown is playing in New York and Los Angeles and will be opening in other cities in the coming weeks. On November 2nd, Fathom Events and Abramorama will present a special event screening in over 200 theaters nationwide, followed by a live town hall discussion moderated by CNN’s Chris Cuomo which will include several members of the Newtown community.