FAIR Screening: 15 Days

"15 Days to Flatten the Curve"

Hi all,

On Wednesday, August 12, FAIR will screen 15 Days, directed by Natalya Murakhver. This will be the last film of their summer series. Since its release 15 Days has received accolades from across the country and has been screened nationwide. It is also the first film to tackle head on the real story of America’s pandemic school closures, especially how the promise of “15 days to flatten the curve” stretched into the longest shutdowns in the developed world. Many of the children were affected negatively in various ways while the bureaucrats often put their own interests before. What Natalya uncovered in 15 Days was not the sanitized narrative of, “we did the best we could with the information we had.” It was something far more ideological and manipulative and the film shows with evidence.

Click here to sign up for the screening and Q & A.

I’ve never invited anyone else to write on my Substack before but I thought it would be great for Natalya to introduce the film to you. Please follow her on her substack: Restore Childhood. Below is her in her own words.

Have a great weekend,

Eli

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I’m honored to be writing in this space. Most of you know Eli as the filmmaker. I know him as the person who taught me how to become one.

Eli and I met in 2022. I had just announced on social media that I wanted to make a film about the pandemic school closures. My goal was simple and also ambitious. I wanted to preserve the stories and make sure no one ever forgot the truth, because I knew the teachers’ unions would rewrite it. A mother in Los Angeles saw the post (on what was then Twitter) and told me that if I was serious, I needed to reach out to Eli Steele. I had never watched a single one of his documentaries. I had no idea who he was.

To my surprise and delight, Eli was willing to help right away. He got on Zoom with me. He told me which equipment to buy. He walked me through every step and helped me pick the right crew as I needed it. He connected me with the incredible Hawk Jensen, who joined us as a producer and later cut the film in post, and who turned it into the sharp investigation it became. I owe Eli for his mentorship, for his friendship, and for his films.

Watching What Killed Michael Brown? and How Jack Became Black, and then talking with Eli constantly over the past four years, changed me. My understanding of what we owe one another as members of a society is not what it was. I am a formerly progressive Democrat Jew. I used to believe Jews had a rightful place inside DEI. Eli always said no. It has to be a meritocracy. I agreed with him in principle, especially as a Soviet immigrant, but part of me still hoped my people could somehow be part of the system.

I don’t hope that anymore. I understand now how rotten it all is. It ignores human nature. It rewards entitlement and handouts and kills the drive to build anything great. It produces a stifled, dead society. It’s the kind of place we left behind when my family came here from the Soviet Union in 1977 with almost nothing. Eli helped me see that clearly, and I’m grateful.

So it means a great deal that 15 DAYS is screening at FAIR’s retrospective of Eli’s work as the final film. To be produced by him, to have his name attached to this film, means everything, because Eli Steele stands for integrity, honesty, and substance.

15 DAYS is the only film actually telling the story of what happened during the school closures, and it tells it two ways. First through the interviews. We spoke with nearly 60 people, starting in 2022 as schools were reopening and continuing for about three years. Not every interview made the final cut, of course, and Eli helped me understand we needed to tell a story not just show a series of talking heads. Second, the film looks at what the unions and the politicians were doing while children sat locked out of their classrooms, losing their futures.

We went to the primary sources wherever we could. We interviewed children and parents in New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and California. We went all over the country because we needed to show how universal this was. Even the wealthiest families were not spared. The Burns children in Boston, who later moved to Austin, had real means, and still could not all attend remote school at the same time because they didn’t have the bandwidth for it. Some children mattered more than others. That’s how it felt, and the film shows why.

We show Bam Morgan, a Queens high school student who was hoping for a football scholarship. The closures took that from him. He gained weight, lost his shot, and had to repeat his senior year. The scholarship never came. He went on to community college, did tremendously well, and is now headed to Howard University.

We interviewed Jay Bhattacharya just before the Twitter Files broke, which gave us access we would have lost within weeks. We were on the scene, triaging these stories as they happened. That’s why they’re so raw. People tell me the film brings back their own pain, and that they feel they have to sit in it to come out the other side stronger, informed, and finally able to process what was done to them.

I’m proud to present this film. I’m honored to have Eli as part of it and to have it under his wing.

I hope you’ll come see what we’re doing at Restore Childhood. We build toolkits and resources to educate and empower parents, and we tell the stories of what it takes to be great in America right now, whether that’s the doctors who spoke out during COVID or public school mom Maud Maron in my recent Palladium Pictures film Uncancellable. Maud stood up to her school board when they forced DEI down everyone’s throats and ran for Manhattan District Attorney against Alvin Bragg.

Bravery and greatness are right in front of us if we know where to look. Finding it and showing it is how I understand my job, as an American, a filmmaker, a mother, and a citizen.

Please join us on Wednesday, August 12 for the FAIR screening. Register here.

Thank you for reading, and thank you to Eli for including me. If you’d like to follow my work, you’ll find it at the Restore Childhood Substack, where 15 DAYS streams in full alongside everything else we’re building. It’s also on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Google Play.