“I will bring a knife to school tomorrow and fuck you up”
I want to buzz The Bully Project! As you know I’m a movie-fanatic and can’t get enough of good films. The Bully Project was my second out of three HIFF movies that day. The first was The Kid with a Bike, a French/Belgium movie that bored me a bit. My third would be Headhunters. A Scandinavian action packed movie, which I was looking very much forward to seeing -notonly because of yummi Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. In between these very different movies I decided to squeeze a documentary about bullying in. And I’m so glad that I did… This movie broke my heart. And I wasn’t the only one in the cinema having a sob.
As the title applies the doc is about the morbid effect of pure harassment on alienated young people. It follows five kids and families over the course of one school year across America. All five families tell their powerful and heartfelt story about the daily struggle and experience with bullying. Bullying is the most common form of violenceyoung people in the States experience. And is unfortunately constantly dismissed as a simple fact of life.
I was shocked to experience the extreme brutality and the pure evilness the poor kids daily were exposedto. I’ve been bullied too in middle school (probably the reason why I wanted to watch the doc), but I’ve never ever experienced any thing remotely similar to this severe abuse the kids suffered. I was stunned, shocked andoutraged. I have been effected by my (apparently very mild) experiences ever since, so I can’t even begin to imagine the enormous effect this daily abuse year after year will have on the victims’ adult lives. Unfortunately some of the sufferers will not have an adult live. “We tug him in one more time and put him to bed” a father says to his devastated wife on their way to their 11-year-old sons’ funeral. The little boy toke his one life because he couldn’t stand the abuse any longer – a very drastic consequence of bullying.
The film aims to be a catalyst for change in the way we deal with bullying as parents, teachers, children and society as a whole. I think it’s a very important movie to show to all school kids and especially teachers, not only across America, but also across the world.
