First documentary on the shooting of Parkland in South Florida

Less than a year after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre on Valentine's Day, the first feature-length documentary was opened in South Florida in front of a small audience of interviewees and survivors .

"Parkland: Inside Building 12" is a terrible example: every day, an armed man killed 17 people and injured dozens of others.

The first half of the film consists of dramatic and dramatic interviews interspersed with shocking footage of cell phones inside the school during the attack. Director Charlie Minn comes back and forth on a clip of Maddy Wilford, an injured student, slumped against a desk, almost exhausted, as blood stains formed on her denim jacket. "Maddy? Maddy ?! "Ask the person who takes the video in panic.

Other clips show officers carrying dead and wounded students from the classroom as students moan and scream, or googly pupils hiding under a desk as more and more shots are fired. together. They are horrible – and fuzzy.

Originally, Minn did not scramble any of the images that he convinced to share with him.

"My opinion is that people need to see it," he said. "Obviously, showing that people are being murdered has more impact than telling them. It would be a report on the radio. I work in a visual medium. "

"This is how you get real action, instead of cliché thoughts and prayers."

Parkland's parents were not in agreement.

When the initial trailer appeared, highlighting Maddy's bloody video, "we immediately went into action," said Tony Montalto, father of the murdered Gina student and head of Stand With Parkland, family rights group of 17 victims.

Minn agreed to scramble all the videos showing dead students. He said that these films are centered on the victim and that he wanted to respect their wishes.

Like Minn's latest works, this movie does not name the shooter. He said that he thought focusing on the abuser was disrespectful to the victims and led to imitators, a vision shared by many Parkland victims.

This is the latest film in a series of movies dedicated to the victim for Minn. His 26 films offer a dark and often graphic look at some of the bloodiest victims in recent history. He has directed documentaries about mass shooting in Las Vegas, the Pulse Massacre in Orlando and a mass shoot on a Long Island train, as well as a host of films about violence in Mexico.

He turns, rides and debuts quickly. This lasted about four months and includes interviews with dozens of students, teachers, family members and first responders. Several Miami Herald reporters were interviewed for this documentary.

Minn debuted in South Florida for the movie at Paragon Ridge 8 Davie Theater with a private screening for the Stoneman Douglas families. The theater is planning a weeklong tour for the film that will begin Oct. 25 at Davie and Coral Springs. All proceeds from their tickets go to various charities, including Parkland Cares. The documentary will also be available in streaming on Amazon Prime Video after the theatrical release.

Previously, he had screened the film on Long Island, where the family of geography professor Scott Beigel lived. Minn is based in New York and believes that the Beigel family has inspired this film and helped it reach all students and teachers.

Several of the interviewees were in the audience on Friday night, including Tony and Gina Montalto.

The film relied heavily on the simulation created by the investigators to reconstruct the filming timeline, which represented the students in the form of moving dots.

"I can not stand it," a teacher moaned when the sequence first appeared. She hid her face in her hands.

The shooter was black, with a protruding line for his gun. Students and teachers started in green and turned yellow when they were injured and blue when they were killed. Minn's film added names to the points, associating their color changes with a video showing students describing the deaths of their classmates.

"It's not an easy thing to watch," Tony Montalto said. "We knew where our point was."

The second half of the film was made up of mini-profiles of the seventeen victims. He discusses significant controversy as a result of the shooter: the school's resource officer, Scot Peterson, does not enter the building – "cowardly," spat a woman during the film; if schools should be hardened – "amen!" came the choir; and the teacher who accidentally locked himself with his students out of the third-floor classroom when the shooter arrived.

It did not include the policy changes adopted since the deadly shootout, including Marjory Stoneman Douglas' security law in Florida and the STOP School Violence and NICS Act laws passed in the Comprehensive Expenditure Bill.

"We need to get all Americans to come together and come up with solutions," said Montalto. "We are happy that the community is beginning to heal, but at the same time, do not forget us."

During the private screening, the public often mentioned the concept of healing. The informal Q & A session at the end of the film quickly became a kind of town hall as the microphone was passed from teacher to parent-to-parent survivor.

"It was the perfect time for this film," said Ronit Reoven, professor of psychology at AP Stoneman Douglas, very present in the film. "We are healing now. We feel ready for everyone to understand the true stories of the real survivors. "

The survivor at the heart of the film, Maddy Wilford, took the microphone to applaud, applaud and shout "We love you".

"It's not because it's been seven months since we're well," said Maddy, shot three times. "I'm just happy that our voices are finally heard and that we can continue to make changes."

After public encouragement, Ashley Baez, a student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, stood in front of the theater and, holding the microphone near her mouth, told her story. In an almost whisper, she recounted that she had entered the building in the first year to use the bathroom during the music class and that she had seen a boy in a JROTC polo holding a rifle that she thought was a fake.

She was hit in the leg. "I think you can see," she said, pointing to her warped but now healed thigh.

She still managed to get to a classroom, where other students put a t-shirt around her leg and maintained pressure on the wound until the arrival of the students. help. She walked with a cane for a while, even going up to the March for our lives.

When she was done, Missy, Maddy's mother, walked to the front of the theater and hugged Ashley tightly in her arms.

She took the microphone and told the audience that she had not watched much of the news since the shooting. This documentary, she said, allowed her to better understand what happened than anything she heard from officials or her traumatized children.

"Now I understand, not only of her, but of all the other students, I am just grateful for this film so that I can witness what I could not," she said. "It's part of the healing process."