Newhouse Alumna Honored with Academy Award Nomination for Producing Film “Death By Numbers”
Janique Robillard ’08 is a producer, director, filmmaker and now, an Oscar nominee. The magazine journalism alumna earned a nomination for Best Documentary Short Film at the 2025 Academy Awards for “Death By Numbers.” The film, which Robillard produced alongside director Kim A. Snyder and producing partner Maria Cuomo Cole, tells the powerful story of Sam Fuentes, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018.
Robillard reflects on staying true to Fuentes’ story, how her Newhouse education has influenced her career and more.
The Oscars will be awarded Sunday in Los Angeles.
What does it mean to you to have “Death By Numbers” be nominated for an Oscar and receive global attention?
It’s an incredible honor to be nominated as a producer on “Death by Numbers” with our director, Kim A. Snyder, and my producing partner, Maria Cuomo Cole. I think one of the most meaningful things to us is that our writer and collaborator, Sam Fuentes, who is a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School shooting and is a brilliant, fierce, courageous and vulnerable young woman sharing her experience through her writing… It means everything to me to be able to bring her story to an audience and a larger platform in this way… This whole experience is surreal being here now, but staying true to Sam and her story is the most grounding thing in this moment.
How did your time as a magazine major at Newhouse get you to where you are today, an Oscar-nominated producer?
At Syracuse, I studied finance and magazine journalism. I was drawn to [the magazine major] because I knew that I liked longer form investigative storytelling, and I loved the idea of being able to drop into a world and immerse myself in something and be a specialist by proxy in a lot of different things and meet different people. That was my vision there…With finance, it was something I knew I wouldn’t just learn myself. I was in the business school and I looked at the options and I thought, that’s the one somebody should teach me.
My role now in film as a producer really does take things that I learned from magazine and journalism and finance when it comes to the accounting and budgets and project management and storytelling and interviewing and culling down years of material into a concise story. I didn’t do either of the exact things that I was studying, but I feel gratified that I use a lot of the things that I learned.
What advice do you have for Newhouse students?
[Something that] I think is important, if any student at Syracuse is reading this, is that the alumni network is really everything. I would not be on this exact course that I’m on if it hadn’t been for the opportunities that I had because of the alumni network or the NBC Olympics internship program that works with the Newhouse School. That was a huge opportunity for me to get immersed in the world of journalism and motion broadcast coverage. I would encourage any student to read the [Newhouse Network] alumni magazine, and keep in touch with classmates because you never know where they’re going to end up, even if it’s not your exact major. That made a big difference for me.
What were some rewarding moments in creating this documentary?
For me, being able to work on a team steeped in the gun violence prevention space for more than a decade… of survivor-centered storytelling with a core team who really understands that space, it brought a trust and camaraderie that we knew we were all in this to, maybe it sounds grandiose, but hopefully make a difference. To be able to work on something that will hopefully spark conversations around gun violence prevention, safe storage, [and] the things that we can do as a community to make sure that nobody has to go through what Sam and her classmates and her community and so many others in this country have had to go through because of gun violence. That’s the most rewarding part. And, working on a small team that’s female-led with Kim, Sam, Maria… It’s not the case on every film. It’s a very male dominated industry. So there’s a lot of heart in there, too, for me in that way.
What changes or progress have you seen when it comes to women in the film industry?
With documentary filmmaking, it’s interesting [because] I think we’re the category, whether it’s the shorts or the features …that often does have more women at the helm. So I feel good about that, but it’s something I’d like to see ripple further throughout the industry. So much of that comes down to who’s making the decisions when it comes to funding, access to distribution, access to who gets to share their story. A lot of those decisions influence if I get to be in the room as a storyteller. And with documentaries, I think we have less of those barriers when the storytelling process starts…Every year, I see reports of more women getting funding or more women directors getting opportunities. It’s something I hope to continue seeing.