ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
Children in South Texas, who bear an outsized burden of loss, learn language for what feels impossible—and discover, alongside their community, the power of mutual understanding combined with shared intentions.

SYNOPSIS
The Texas Hill Country has absorbed tragedy upon tragedy in recent years. On May 24,2022, a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde killed 19 children and teachers. On July 4, 2025, flooding of the Guadalupe River in Kerrville took at least 139 lives, including 25 campers and 2 counselors at Camp Mystic. It destroyed nearly everything above ground. 84% of the population is low income and minority compounding their loss.

A GARDEN FOR WHAT REMAINS is a character-driven documentary following a diverse group of children over a year as they undergo grief counseling at The Children’s Bereavement Center of South Texas, which served 1,577 children and 1,044 adults in 2025, free of charge. We will explore their experience with evidence-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as we follow their lives over a year, witnessing arrival, resistance opening, setback, and the slow work of reconnecting with oneself.

Woven alongside their journeys are caregivers, community members, and faith leaders shepherding recovery. Father Bert Baetz, a Kerrville pastor who awaited news of his own daughter when the flood hit, is now raising a new church incorporating driftwood and river rock pulled from the Guadalupe. Murals inside will be living memorials honoring the lives lost. In Uvalde, families are making ceramic tiles for a meditation garden, turning grief into something touched and tended. Stories of repair are the film’s beating heart.

Grief is a subject our culture pushes away. To function as a society, we must learn to live with grief: to listen well, to name feelings accurately, and to respond non-reactively. These skills change individuals and societies. The counseling will change the lens through which these children see their world; our film will change the lens through which the public perceives grief and healing. There is no more urgent subject.

PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature / Film Essay

DIRECTOR Kathryn Himoff
PRODUCER Kathryn Himoff, Elyse Katz

ID: 802