SXSW 2025 Review: UVALDE MOM, As Questions Remain, a Hero Arises

On May 24, 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States, with an AR-15 style rifle. The former pupil fatally shot 19 students and two teachers, while injuring 17 others.

These deaths and injuries happened over time that day. While some police officers and parents were quick to reach the scene, security footage, cellphone recordings and news media revealed troubling events occurring outside the school. Law enforcement officials did not act immediately.

They waited outside and initially prevented frantic parents from trying to enter, in some cases even handcuffing or tasering them. When officers finally went in, the school cameras show them pausing in the hallways as shots and screams could be heard inside a classroom. In the end, nearly 400 armed officers waited 77 minutes to act.

One parent, Angeli Rose Gomez, did get past the police to rescue her children and their cousin. Uvalde Mom is her story but in the richest sense, it is so much more: award winning director Anayansi Prado (Maid in America, The Unafraid), wisely uses this portrait of a hero to substantially expand the film’s scope.

There’s a ripple effect happening in this film as the director creates portrait upon portrait upon portrait. This stirring documentary grows from its singular focus into an investigation of a broken system, a fractured society and the unforeseen consequences of being a media celebrity.

The more Gomez spoke to media about her actions that day, and the more she was celebrated, the more scrutiny she came under. Beyond enquiries about how she could be so brave were the related questions about how she could accomplish what she did when armed police officers couldn’t. Despite the fact that she was not the only one criticizing the department in Uvalde, she was the one that they threatened.

Turns out that like every other hero out there, she is flawed and has made mistakes. Gomez has a record. The police had means to pressure her to be quiet – and they used them. As a determined individual, she of course did not heed their warnings. It didn’t help her situation when the inevitable social media backlash followed and even people in her own community started telling tales.

Whether or not Uvalde Mom is trying to answer Gomez’s critics is not the point here. Prado and her subject certainly lean into the criticism and reveal details of her troubled past. It’s not the clearest account, there are certainly holes, but Gomez’s resolve is inspiring.

What’s most notable is that the film is much more than a response to critics. Prado skillfully accomplishes this through her formal strategy. This documentary is a complex weave that reflects the push-pull of the personal and public discourses that occurred around her actions.

Throughout the film, montages of mainstream and social media accounts unfold in rapid fire succession as Prado mixes in gentler observational footage of Gomez with her family. Interviews with them plus legal experts and members of the community fill in the story. The level of candour is admirable here as even her mother and one of her sons are frustrated with Gomez’s behaviour at certain points in the film.

More importantly, this film is bursting with cogent analysis. Through Gomez’s story, Prado leads the viewer into an intense analysis of wider-ranging issues. We learn of certain facts about the community of Uvalde, something that was brought up by the media at the time of the shooting, but which deserves a more extensive focus.

The reality of the situation was – with regard to the mass shooting and with regard to Gomez and the other parents in the community fighting for justice for their children – that Uvalde is a predominantly Hispanic community with the main sources of wealth and power lying in the hands of the white minority. Robb Elementary was located in the Hispanic part of town. In the context of this documentary, this is a truth that speaks volumes.

So, while Uvalde Mom may raise questions about the individual at the centre of this story that it doesn’t always answer, it is to its credit that it creates a portrait of a flawed individual that is a far more relatable hero. Whatever the truth of that day is – and there will always be questions when it comes to the veracity of any situation – it’s fascinating how this film dissects the truth and leaves many of the larger questions unanswered as well. That’s more reflective of the reality of what happened on May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas.

The film enjoys its world premiere at SXSW 2025.