Epoch Times - How School Closures Irrevocably Harmed a Generation | Natalya Murakhver
Aired: 2025-11-13
Duration: 02:19


=== Why We Started Filming (02:19) ===

[00:00:00]  They'll bear witness to the stories of the people who experienced the closures directly from them.
[00:00:07]  And the film was shot almost immediately following the closures.
[00:00:11]  We started in 2022.
[00:00:13]  So the pain was still extremely raw when we started filming.
[00:00:17]  We just got in a car.
[00:00:18]  Stephanie Edmonds, who is my friend and was a teacher who lost her job in the New York City public schools due to the vaccine mandates, she refused to comply.
[00:00:28]  The union didn't fight for her and they fired her instead.
[00:00:31]  So she was available.
[00:00:33]  She was a single mom.
[00:00:34]  I met her at a rally and I thought, hey, let's make this film.
[00:00:39]  And she was totally up for it.
[00:00:40]  So we got on the road and just started rolling.
[00:00:43]  I mean, it was, we did everything wrong.
[00:00:45]  I can't believe this film is even done or out or you can see it.
[00:00:49]  So I think for me, that's a huge triumph to be fair.
[00:00:52]  We did bring in an incredible producer in Eli Steele, who is a very gifted storyteller and filmmaker.
[00:00:59]  And he advised us every step of the way.
[00:01:02]  And then we have Hawk Jensen, who's a veteran filmmaker as well, who came on board about a year and a half ago to help with the massive, massive editing process.
[00:01:11]  So this film, in many ways, has been made in post-production.
[00:01:15]  I will also point out that we did almost 60 interviews over three years.
[00:01:21]  So there's no way you can feature 60 interviews in a film that's one hour and nine minutes long.
[00:01:28]  These are just the stories that we could fit in here.
[00:01:31]  There are many, many more stories that I hope to at some point edit and release so that people hear them.
[00:01:38]  And it was inspired very much by Steven Spielberg and what he did during the show up, the founding of the Showa Foundation, because I remember reading the story of how important it was to him to preserve the Holocaust survivors' stories while they were still alive because it was primary material.
[00:01:54]  Once they were gone, it was gone.
[00:01:56]  And of course, this wasn't a Holocaust, but it was a hugely avoidable tragedy for children and families in this country.
[00:02:04]  And I just felt like, well, we better get those stories in now because people aren't going to want to talk about them in a couple of years.
[00:02:10]  And it's true, even now, as we show the film, I see people, I watch their body language, and they shudder.
[00:02:17]  It takes them back to a very, very dark time.