Speaking Is Difficult

AJ Schnack's film may be less than 15 minutes long, but during that running time it details 237 deaths by mass shooting in the US since 2011 - and that's not to mention the many more who were injured. Mass shootings are classed as any incident that leaves four people either wounded or dead and worrying data from Mother Jones database shows the frequency is accelerating rapidly.

A subtitle at each different location in the film tells us where we are and who died. Some of the names are already chillingly familiar - the cinema in Aurora, Colorado, from 2012, where during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises (which also inspired fellow Sundance film Dark Knight) 12 people died, Sandy Hook, Connecticut, where 20 primary school children and seven adults were shot dead in the same year and Orlando, Florida, where the worst mass shooting in US history left 49 dead at a nightclub this June. Others probably never made it to the international news but include places as far apart as Washington, South Carolina, California and Kansas.

Schnack uses shots of the crime scenes taken after the event and you're immediately struck by the ordinariness of it all. These are cinemas, streets and buildings like millions up and down the country - if not the world - with people going about their business. Sometimes there is an echo of what has gone before, such as a memorial, a flutter of police tape or evidence that the venue is being demolished, but more often than not, people are merely picking up their shopping or cycling to school.

Over these shots of day to day life, runs the radio squelch and crackle of dispatch phone recordings. Traumatised callers reporting "shots fired" or killers with "automatic weapons" - with the sound of gun reports frequently audible in the background - as the emergency services try to calm them down and establish what is happening. The cumulative result is powerful and deeply distressing, connecting you at once with the way normality can be pierced by violence and the disturbing thought that, as we look at the scenes in retrospect, little has changed in terms of US gun laws and the communities where these things happened have frequently 'just moved on'. Schnack offers no answers and, rather than getting embroiled in the debate regarding weapon controls, merely sets out the consequences of the current state of affairs and invites us to draw our own conclusions.

The film takes its name from and culminates with a statement made by former US Representative Danielle Giffords - shot in the head in Tuscon in 2011 in an incident that left six dead - in which she urges action. The fact that Schnack - who is determined to keep his film up to date - has already recut it since its January premiere in Sundance to take account of recent incidents such as that in Orlando, only serves to underline the urgency of his argument and the growing tragedy of the situation.

The film is available to watch for free on Field of Vision.