''Aftershock'' is a 2022 American documentary film directed and produced by Paula Eiselt and

Tonya Lewis Lee Tonya Linnette Lewis Lee (née Lewis; March 30, 1966) is an American film and television producer, author, entrepreneur, and advocate for women and infant health. Since founding her production company, Madstone Company Inc., in 1998, she has been ...

. It follows Omari Maynard and Bruce McIntyre, whose partners died due to childbirth complications, which were preventable, as they fight for justice. The film premiered at the

2022 Sundance Film Festival The 2022 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 20 to 30, 2022. Due to COVID-19 pandemic protocol it was to have been a hybrid festival, but on January 5, 2022 it was announced that the in-person components would be scrapped in favor o ...

on January 23, 2022. It was released on July 19, 2022, by ABC News Studios,

Onyx Collective Onyx Collective is a content brand owned and operated by Disney Entertainment, which primarily consists of projects from creators of color and other underrepresented groups. The brand was first launched on May 17, 2021, with several projects under ...

, and

Hulu Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television serie ...

. It received critical acclaim.

Plot

Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac both died during childbirth from complications that were preventable. Their partners, Omari Maynard and Bruce McIntyre, come together with other fathers to fight for justice and build communities of support.

Release

''Aftershock'' had its world premiere at the

on January 23, 2022.

ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...

, and

shortly after acquired distribution rights to the film. It also screened at

South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...

on March 13, 2022.

Reception

Critical response

On the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, it has a 100% approval rating based on reviews from 28 critics, with an average rating of 8.10/10. The website's consensus reads: "''Aftershock'' points a sobering spotlight on a public health crisis, maintaining a heartbreaking focus on its tragic human cost."

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which uses a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

, assigned the film a score of 87 out of 100 based on 7 critics, indicating "universal acclaim."

Accolades

References

External links

* * * {{Rotten Tomatoes, aftershock_2022 2022 films 2022 documentary films American documentary films Documentary films about death Documentary films about health care Documentary films about pregnancy Hulu original films Onyx Collective original programming 2020s English-language films 2020s American films