This Is Them

This is them. This is their time.

And the kids are driving us back to the theater experience, too.

Fresh off a pre-, during, and post-COVID-19 award-winning trek up the 2020 film-festival circuit, the documentary Us Kids is ready for ya. Catch it at the drive-in, when it visits your city for a very special screening, OK.

Directed by Kim A. Snyder (Newtown), the film chronicles the student-led March For Our Lives movement that since March 2018 has been urging society and lawmakers to champion better, stronger legislation to prevent gun violence in the United States of America. March For Our Lives was a direct reaction to the Valentine’s Day 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., which left 17 people (mostly teenaged students) dead and 17 others injured.

The film centers on youth activist Emma González (pictured above), one of the most recognizable faces of the movement, as well as March For Our Lives co-founders, survivors, and a group of teenage activists, as they pull off the largest youth protest in American history, creating a global platform to build an inclusive and unprecedented youth movement that to this day continues to address racial justice and a growing public-health crisis, while shocking a political system and the culture into change.

Survivors Samantha Fuentes and Alex Dworet (they got hit with bullets shot from an AR15 – have you seen what that weapon can do?) will take the doc on the road following the Miami, Fla., kick-off screening on Aug. 25 (at Wynwood’s Carpool Cinema). They will seek to engage with youth across the state of Florida and beyond to emphasize the importance of youth civic engagement at this juncture in the development of our nation. These are the dates and locations announced for the tour so far:

8.27.20: Atlanta, Ga., Plaza Drive-In

8.27.20: Newport Film Festival Drive-In

8.31.20: Raleigh, N.C., Raleigh Road Drive-In

9.10.20: Philadelphia, Pa., PFS Drive

9.15.20: Houston, Texas, Rooftop Film Club

9.17.20: Phoenix, Ariz., Digital Drive-In Mesa

9.23.20: Detroit, Mich., Cinema Lamont

9.29.20: Denver, Colo., Denver Film Society Red Rocks

10.3.20: Milwaukee, Wis. MKE Film

Said Snyder, who will participate in a live pre-screening convo in Miami, in a press release announcing the drive-in tour, “With gun sales skyrocketing since the onset of COVID along with gun violence disproportionately affecting [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color], and suicide and domestic violence on the rise, the issue of gun violence cannot be siloed from what is happening in our streets.

“This screening tour is intended to stand in solidarity with the youth movement we’ve been working with these past years in creating the film to ensure the gun issue be a top priority as we head into this critical period.”

We’re, for sure, gonna have to get this doc to drive into California, no?