After Parkland review: ABC News doc shows students, parents in grief and healing
The survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school shooting take center stage in a smartly constructed look at what happens after tragedy strikes
“I feel bad,” an interviewer starts as the camera focuses on Andrew Pollack, from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, eagle logo on his polo shirt up. Pollack’s daughter, Meadow, was killed at the school in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day last year.
“I want you to not feel bad,” he says, cutting off her questions. “If someone murdered my kid, I’m just saying, I can take anything.” Pollack’s frankness in the first frames of After Parkland, from film-makers Emily Taguchi and Jake Lefferman of ABC Documentaries, underlies the rest of the film, which stares down the messy, confounding, idiosyncratic well of grief as it dams up and spills through Parkland over the course of 2018.