For a brief period of time, Angeli Rose Gomez’s grandfather was the chief of police in Uvalde, Texas, a job that didn’t last long when another high-ranking position became available elsewhere in the state and as people remember in “Uvalde Mom,” neither he nor the department were eager for him to stick around when being Hispanic, he didn’t fit the profile of what upper management was supposed to look like in the town. It became part of what dissuaded his granddaughter from pursuing a career in law enforcement herself, though she likely would’ve made for a good hire, having been a student body president and clearly a toughness that can’t be taught, and in Anayansi Prado’s gripping documentary, her strong resolve and a healthy distrust of police appears to have uniquely prepared her to save her two sons from being killed in the horrific school shooting that occurred at Robb Elementary in 2022.
“Uvalde Mom” is truly unusual in following the survivors of a school shooting who are still under attack, not explicitly from the lingering trauma of such a horrific event though surely that’s there or enduring lunatic conspiracy theories like the grieving parents at Sandy Hook Elementary, but instead the local cops. When Gomez got the call that her children were in harm’s way, she left her job and forced her way into the school when she grew frustrated with what appeared to be a dereliction of duty on the part of officers who refused to enter themselves for hours — a suspicion later borne out by surveillance footage from the day. She was subsequently hailed in the media for her courage and became a prominent interviewee in the resulting news coverage, but in pointing out the flaws of the police response, she was not well-liked by the cops, who began to watch her every move and could threaten to put her behind bars by pulling up an old domestic battery charge in which she fought back against an abusive ex since she was still on probation.
Although running into a building where there was an active shooter seems unthinkable to most, it looks like the only choice Gomez could’ve made as each second passes in “Uvalde Mom,” less out of any maternal instinct she felt than knowing from experience that no one was coming to their rescue. Prado does well to pull back from Gomez’s harrowing recollection of May 24th that opens the film to show how this wasn’t exactly an extraordinary event in her life or for her community in Uvalde, where the former principal at Gomez’s school believed the area was especially susceptible to a violent attack such as the one that occurred. The mysteriously muted response to the tragedy as it was happening and after is presented with the context that Robb, being in the more heavily Hispanic populated part of Uvalde, had likely been considered an afterthought by authorities — when Governor Greg Abbott arrived to the scene to say the shooting was “not as bad as it could’ve been,” it wasn’t reassuring when the implication most took away was that it could’ve happened on the other side of town.
There are times when it seems there could be a little more to Gomez than the film is willing to let on, particularly when it comes to her relationship with the father of her children who has been out of the picture for some time after being put in jail himself or the details of her own legal issues, but Prado nonetheless grabs onto the fascinating story that’s unfolding before her as Gomez walks a tricky path of speaking up for all those that lost loved ones in the shooting as her family is harassed by the police department that only seeks to protect themselves. “Uvalde Mom” may inspire when chronicling a true act of heroism, but Prado offers a far more sophisticated and complex portrait exposing the underlying factors ranging from discriminatory dissemination of local resources to access to guns that make it feel as if it should’ve been unnecessary rather than some sad inevitability that the community had resigned themselves to when they could learn to expect the worst. It may have brought out the best in Gomez, but the film elicits a far greater admiration beyond what she went through on one day to all the others that have been far more difficult than they ever needed to be.
“Uvalde Mom” does not yet have U.S. distribution.