Chowchilla

Paul Solet's 2023 documentary covers the mass kidnapping in California in 1976. A school bus was stopped, and the driver and twenty-six children were taken and shut inside a vehicle buried underground. The documentary looks at what fell outside the news. The children got themselves out, but what followed went undiscussed for a long time; the narrative makes the unrecognised trauma its real subject. Survivors speak. Reconstructions are used. What became of the perpetrators and their sentences is also covered. Who it's for: viewers of true crime documentary and accounts of aftermath. Who it's not for: viewers for whom the abduction of children would be difficult to watch.