Anayansi Prado’s doc is an empathetic portrait of a young woman and her South Texas town
Filmmaker Anayansi Prado’s Uvalde Mom premiered at SXSW this week. The documentary profiles Angeli Rose Gomez, the young mother who ran into Robb Elementary School during the active shooter crisis in 2022 to save her sons. The film looks into the school shooting and its aftereffects with a compassionate eye, centering one woman’s story while illustrating the systemic failures leading up to the horrific events.
Gomez is honest and outspoken, and Prado’s work shares these sensibilities, as well. After pregnancy and an abusive partner derailed her hopes of being a cop like her grandfather (the first Latino police chief in Uvalde), Gomez experienced the downsides of the criminal justice system in her town as she was arrested. “I’m a convict,” she openly admits. The viral response to her actions the day of the Robb Elementary shooting allowed her voice to be heard, but led to police harassment within her hometown.
After the Tuesday screening at AFS Cinema, Prado told the audience she wanted to create “as intimate a story as possible” in her film. What’s stunning is that in doing so, the issues we’re shown impacting Gomez’s personal life bleed through into the larger community. While centering Gomez and her story, Uvalde Mom delves into the racial divisions in the South Texas town, the lingering trauma felt among the community, and the historical and current failures in Uvalde’s educational and legal system.
Going in, I wasn’t sure if I could handle the emotional weight of this film; I appreciated that there were trauma counselors on hand at the SXSW screenings in case anyone needed them. Although sadness pervades the story (how could it not after such an event), the documentary made me more infuriated than anything. There’s the frustration at the slow law enforcement response the day of the shooting, anger at Gomez being targeted for speaking out about same slow response, and exasperation at ongoing ways authorities continue to let down minority communities in Uvalde and our state, in general.
Uvalde Mom is an impressively considered construction, especially as far as the editing and the scoring. The thoughtful sound editing adds even more depth to the storytelling. Using a Texas-based crew – the filmmaker herself is from California – Prado’s film is a work of reciprocal trust and deep empathy. The director and her team spent time building trust with the subject and her family, and it shows.
Uvalde Mom has a last SXSW screening on Friday at the Hyatt Regency.
