Bully

47 min
USA
Children's rights Philosophy of Human Rights Right to human dignity

eng: for_whom

Teachers Pupils Students Activists / NGOs

Bully

BULLY is a beautifully cinematic, character-driven documentary. At its heart are those with huge stakes in this issue whose stories each represent a different facet of America’s bullying crisis. Filmed over the course of the 2009/2010 school year, BULLY opens a window onto the pained and often endangered lives of bullied kids, revealing a problem that transcends geographic, racial, ethnic and economic borders.

 

It documents the responses of teachers and administrators to aggressive behaviours that defy “kids will be kids” clichés, and it captures a growing movement among parents and youths to change how bullying is handled in schools, in communities and in society as a whole. Parents play a vital role in supporting their kids, promoting upstander rather than bystander behaviour, and teaching and modelling empathy in the home.

Director

Lee Hirsch

Lee Hirsch (born 1972) is an American documentary filmmaker. Hirsch is a graduate of The Putney School in Vermont and Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts. He wrote and directed the documentary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony. Hirsch also contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008), edited by Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky). His film Bully premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

Film poster
Films shorts
Films shorts

Bully, each of us started thinking about whether we can feel our children. How we inquire about their school life, their experiences and worries. This film reminds us that only we as parents have to teach children to talk about their problems while it’s not too late. The film’s protagonist Alex defined his own problem as the fact that he had never told anyone anything, and he had to endure all the abuse. This proves once again that children often find themselves alone with their problems.

Visitor of the Docudays UA film club at the Volochysk Central Library