RAISING A SCHOOL SHOOTER

directed by Frida and Lasse Barkfors

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The Guardian / Lucy Mangan

”We can dress up meaningless things beautifully and provide a stately spectacle with the best of them – but we can also strip meaningful things down and let them stand unadorned, unsentimentalised, and let their power speak for itself. That is what the best of our documentary strands do, and it is a skill and talent shown to some of its best advantage here. Three stories with so many aspects and layers of loss to each are examined with intelligence, nuance and compassion. The question of why, of how such things could happen, is asked but a single answer never demanded. In a world filled with the roar of idiot-cannon and escalating culture wars, it feels like an increasingly rare moment of grace.”

Daily Mail / Mail online / Christopher Stevens

”A lesson in quiet courage from the parents of school shooters.”

“their parents' mundane activities seem almost miraculous. [..]You wonder how anyone can carry on, finding the strength for years to perform everyday routines after such devastating events.”

INews / Barbara Speed

”A portrait of love without limits – even for a murderer. The film is an astounding piece of work, treating the parents of school shooters with compassion.”

”In quiet, understated interviews with three parents, Raising a School Shooter asked what it is to live that nightmare. It was an astounding piece of work, most remarkable because of its handling of two all-encompassing, yet seemingly opposing forces: the horror of crimes like these, and parental love.”

New Statesman / Rachel Cooke

”Raising a School Shooter is a profoundly moving documentary”

”the message of their [Frida & Lasse Barkfors] searching and ultimately profoundly moving documentary being not only that life must (and does) go on even after something unimaginably terrible has happened, but that human survival often depends on the humdrum. For those whose world has been razed to the ground – and for the people in this film, the devastation has been total – domestic routine is a kind of hand rail, a rope to be used to pull themselves along as the hours turn into days, and the days into weeks, months and (eventually) years.”

Financial Times / Suzi Feay

(subscribers only)

”Imagine attending the funeral of your teenage son and wanting him to be cremated while you wait, because you fear that someone will steal or desecrate his body. With enormous dignity and pathos, Sue Klebold describes the aftermath of her son’s infamous rampage at Columbine High School in 1999.[…] It’s a sombre hour of television to say the least, but out of the horror has come some positivity.”

The Courier / Brian Donaldson

“Raising A School Shooter is sober when it could have been messy, adopting a relentlessly grown-up tone instead of slamming doors at an unsociable hour. This subject is ripe for dramatic reconstructions, while in the case of the Columbine High massacre of 1999, there is actual footage of assault rifle-wielding children wandering around a school canteen while their petrified peers flee for their lives. Instead, and as the title suggests, this quiet and dignified documentary zeroes in on the parents who woke up one morning with a normal teenager getting ready for school before that kid ended the day earning notoriety for a blood-letting atrocity. […] We see the parent at home tidying their kitchen or in a yoga class or having a strained phone conversation with their seemingly ordinary offspring. The result is a moving portrayal of integrity and endurance, highlighting the human capacity for carrying on against a natural inclination to just fade away.”

The Times / Joe Clay

(subscribers only)

“I remember thinking that if Dylan is really hurting people the way they’re saying he is, I prayed that he would die.” These are the words of Sue Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two teenagers behind the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. Her raw and deeply personal testimony forms part of Frida and Lasse Barkfors’s powerful documentary that meets three parents whose children were all involved in school shootings. […] Despite the film’s confessional nature, none of the parents is seeking sympathy and the victims aren’t overlooked. It’s a calm, sensitively made film.”

The List / Brian Donaldson

”Sensitive and dignified documentary about parents whose lives have been shattered by their sons' murderous acts.[…] This wholly dignified film focuses on three American parents who woke up into a perfectly normal day and went to bed that night knowing that their child had committed an appalling crime.”

Eye For Film / Matthew Anderson

“More is communicated by a father’s choked, broken voice than would be the case for any news montage or purposefully sensationalist footage from the time. The Barkfors should be commended for the simplicity of their directorial choices, which elevate the emotional impact and make it easier for the viewer to relate to this very sensitive subject matter. […] […] the 100+14 year term given to Elliot’s son, Nicholas, for the killing of a teacher at his Virginia school will strike an all-too familiar, bitter chord[…] The tentacular injustices and social ills that spread from Raising a School Shooter are innumerable. […] The investment and understanding which this film demands of a viewer reflects that which it hopes to encourage: listen without judgement, look at an event from multiple angles, connect with people on all sides. To do so takes courage and filmmakers and subjects alike should be applauded for doing so here.”

Radical Art Review / Olivia Hird

"As the parents muse over personal responsibility, guilt and hope, their acts of everyday life are imbued with resilience. […]The Barkfors’ overriding thread is in lending a generous, open ear to the stigmatised and the shunned. […] The simplicity of the documentary’s form accommodates the weighty subject matter.[…] For those familiar with the US criminal justice system’s historic treatment of black offenders, Nicholas’ sentence presents as an unsubtle and indisputable exhibition of white supremacy. […] As Sue [Klebold] wills us to connect and listen better, you sense an impassioned meeting of minds between the subjects and the filmmakers’ purpose: to generously seek the full picture of a person by leading with inquisition and following with silence.”

Screen / Wendy Ide

”This is the third film in an unflinching American trilogy from husband and wife team Frida and Lasse Barkfors. […] Raising A School Shooter shares with the previous films a dispassionate humanism and intelligent restraint in its approach. […] The sensitivity of approach is evident in the intimacy and access which the filmmakers earned from their subjects. These are people, after all, whose previous experiences with the media have been scarring – the short and easy answer to the question of why a kid picks up a gun and shoots their classmates and teachers is to blame the parents. But the Barkfors are not interested in short and easy answers, and deliberately chose subjects who have sufficient distance from the events to be able process their emotions and experiences, to be able to offer insights which might help prevent the same thing happening repeatedly.”