No Joy At Christmas
This is an idea for a movie that I think really needs to be made.
Synopsis
No Joy At Christmas is the story of three families experiencing their first Christmas without their child who was killed that year in a mass shooting at their school.
A single mother with three children who lives with her parents.
A family with two children, twins, one stayed home from school because he was sick.
A single father raising his only daughter.
Plot
The film opens with each family sending their child off to school; just another normal day. The children reach their classroom and the teacher begins the day’s lessons.
Shortly thereafter the door opens, a figure enters, you quickly see a gun. Then the screen goes black.
BANG!
The screen fades to a flashback of one of the children at last Christmas, their little face happy at the presents and being with their family. Over the course of the next few minutes, their past year is replayed showing their family life. The flashback ends on the day the movie started. Then the screen fades to black again.
BANG!
The screen fades to a flashback of another child at their last Christmas and their year of happy times and memories. The flashback ends on the day the movie started. The screen fades to black again.
BANG!
The screen fades to a flashback of the last child at their last Christmas and quickly follows their year leading up to the fateful day they left for school. The screen fades to black.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The screen returns and its just a few days before this Christmas. We see how each family is coping.
How does a single father, who now has no child, get through a Christmas, get through his daughter’s birthday? How does he handle the media coverage? Worse perhaps, how does he handle life when it feels like he’s been forgotten as the Country has moved on to another mass shooting?
How does a twin cope with the loss of his brother, his closest friend, at Christmas when they’d open their presents together and share them? How do the parents deal with the loss? Does their family survive?
How does the older brother, who just started high school, handle the anger he feels, the helplessness? How does he handle the harassment by insensitive politicans who claim its all a hoax? How does his single mother get through the day and provide a Christmas for the little one who misses her older sibling?
There is no joy at Christmas for the victims of gun violence.