A powerful documentary film written by a Parkland shooting survivor has been nominated for an Academy Award and will be shown later this month in Broward County.
Sam Fuentes collaborated with documentary film director Kim A. Snyder to produce “Death by Numbers,” which chronicles the young woman’s journey from the horrific 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School through the 2022 trial of the shooter. Seventeen people were killed in the mass shooting.
The documentary “breaks through an American society increasingly inured to gun violence and seemingly impervious to a nation of traumatized youth,” said the film’s producer in a statement promoting the documentary. “Interweaving Sam’s evocative poetry and her shooter’s harrowing sentencing trial that will determine whether he lives or dies, we follow Sam’s journey to reclaim her power.”
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Fuentes, who testified at the shooter’s trial in 2022, told the jury then that she was sitting at her desk at the front of the classroom when shots rang out. She said she crawled across the floor to hide with other students who barricaded themselves behind a podium, a cart full of laptops and “just a few books.”
“I was crawling on my hands and knees,” said Fuentes at the trial, where she testified that she was hit by gunfire and multiple pieces of shrapnel. She said she had endured three surgeries for her injuries from the shooting. She now lives in New York City, where she's a film student at Hunter College.
The film producers said the documentary explores questions about “collective hate and what restorative justice looks like for victims” like Fuentes.
The documentary film will be screened in Fort Lauderdale at Savor Cinema and Cinema Paradiso.
IF YOU GO
What: Film screening, Short Documentary “Death by Numbers”
Where: Cinema Paradiso, 2008 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, FL 33020
When: Feb. 18-23 (various times)
Ticket info here
Where: Savor Cinema, 503 SE 6th St, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
When: Feb. 21 (8 p.m.) Feb. 23 (1 p.m.)
Ticket info here
