New Documentary Follows Families Still Dealing With Effects of Pandemic School Closures

A new documentary titled “Generation COVID” examines how pandemic-era school closures continue to affect children six years after classrooms across the country shut down. The film, directed by Jennifer Sey and Andrew James, follows children and families in California, New York, Oregon, Colorado and Connecticut over more than four years of filming.

Sey told Fox News Digital that she made the documentary because she believes the country has moved past the pandemic without fully accounting for its effects on young people.

“It just feels to me like everyone wants to move on, and there’s really been no reckoning about what we did to young people in particular, and I wanted to create a record of that so that it never happens again.”

Sey said she hopes the film serves as a record of how school closures affected American children and pushes for a different response in any future pandemic.

Sey lived in San Francisco for more than three decades and was an outspoken critic of the city’s extended shutdowns. She said that opposition cost her professionally.

“I ended up having to leave San Francisco. I lost a career I’d spent 30 years building, but I continued to speak out in defense of children.”

After leaving her job in 2022, Sey began work on the documentary. She is a former elite gymnast and national team member who has previously spoken about abuse she experienced as a young athlete. She was also an Emmy-winning producer of “Athlete A,” a documentary about the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal and broader abuse in elite gymnastics.

“I ended up being the first whistleblower about abuse in elite gymnastics all the way back in 2008. And I really did it because I wish someone had stood up for me when I was a child, and the abuse that I suffered, I really did not come out of it for two decades after having left the sport. And so, when I see that children are suffering, I can’t help myself. I will fight for them.”

Sey said that sense of urgency carried into her view of the pandemic’s effect on children.

“I feel like everyone’s moved on, but the kids have not moved on.”

She argued that children were treated as an afterthought during the pandemic response.

“They were models, they were cogs in a wheel, and we lost all sense of the humanity of a child, the need to be around other kids for their own development. We lost a sense of a child learning to speak that’s 3 years old, and being told if you don’t wear a mask, you’re going to kill your grandmother. Who tells a child that? Who tells a small child that. We inflicted fear.”

The documentary also examines censorship that Sey believes contributed to keeping school closures in place. “Generation COVID” is set to premiere Oct. 22, 2026, on SalemNOW.