The year is still early, but I doubt there will be a documentary as urgent, powerful and personal as Print It Black. Last year's Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol showed journalism at its most necessary and costly. And this hard-hitting portrait of the newspaper staff in Uvalde, Texas, is just as essential.
Though it's unfortunately gotten lost in America's seemingly endless array of mass shootings, the 19 students and two teachers killed at Robb Elementary made the incident the third-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. And like every tragedy, it ripped a community apart before bringing them together. But as Print It Black shows, healing and justice are often slow, if they come at all.
With its small but dedicated staff, the Uvalde Leader-News is a shining example of a community paper. But while everyone who works there is affected by the shooting, crime reporter Kimberly Rubio has her life changed forever. Her 10-year-old daughter Lexi is among the victims. Losing a child is a pain I can't even imagine, and it forces her to step back from writing and pivot to activism. But change is hard to come by, even in a town that's experienced the deadly effects of gun violence firsthand.
If the doc had only focused on the day of and the months after, it would still be a harrowing, emotional, well-edited feature. But its ability go beyond makes it one of the best films of the year. Weeks after the national media vultures have left, the filmmakers explore the difficulty in rooting out the complacency and corruption that led to that fateful day. In the immediate aftermath, both the school district and local law enforcement stonewall the victims' families. Weeks later, a push to have the school district's police chief fired drags out because - surprise, surprise - he's well-liked in the community. After he's finally let go, further attempts at accountability are shrugged off. Families once hailed as heroes because of their strength are now rebranded as agitators, trying to open old wounds instead of "moving on." And trying to gather support for an assault weapons ban? Forget it, Kim. It's Texas.
I bawled multiple times during this screening, both with sadness and frustration. As Print It Black proves, inspired activism and keeping a local newspaper afloat are hard challenges, maybe even hopeless. But without them, what would we do?
