A documentary film written by a survivor of the Parkland school massacre has been nominated for an Academy Award.
Sam Fuentes collaborated with documentary film director Kim A. Snyder to produce “Death by Numbers,” which chronicles Fuentes' journey from the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School through the shooter's 2022 sentencing trial. Seventeen people were killed.
The documentary “breaks through an American society increasingly inured to gun violence and seemingly impervious to a nation of traumatized youth,” the film’s producer said 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.”
Fuentes, who testified at the trial, told the jury that she was sitting at her desk at the front of a 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,” Fuentes said while testifying 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's producers said the 33-minute documentary explores questions about “collective hate and what restorative justice looks like for victims” like Fuentes.
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