Raising a School Shooter

  • Frida Barkfors, Lasse Barkfors
  • Denmark, Sweden, France, Belgium
  • 2021
  • 74 min
  • Dutch Premiere
  • Best of Fests

Three parents of school shooters talk about their lives after the horrific and incomprehensible act of their child. Jeff’s son is serving a life sentence after he opened fire on his classmates when he was 15. Clarence’s son Nicholas is also in prison for the rest of his life following a fatal shooting. Sue is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of two teenagers who perpetrated the mass shooting at Columbine High School and then killed themselves.

Navigating between grief, guilt, and powerlessness must be a superhuman task. How do you say sorry to the parents of dead classmates? Can you mourn if your son is the perpetrator? What went wrong with their upbringing?

In two previous films, filmmakers Frida and Lasse Barkfors also focused on people facing social stigma, such as parents who were guilty of their own child’s death (Death of a Child, 2017) or ex-prisoners convicted of a child sex offense, who are trying to reintegrate into society (Pervert Park, 2014). In painfully peaceful images of everyday life—which always calmly goes on—these ordinary people speak candidly about their experiences.

Credits

  • 74 min
  • color
  • DCP
  • Spoken languages: English
Director
Frida Barkfors, Lasse Barkfors
Production
Anne Köhncke / Final Cut for Real
Co-production
Frida Barkfors for De Andra Films, Sallah-Edine Ben Jamaa for Les Films Grain de Sable, Thierry Detaille for Visible Film, Lisa Nyed for Film i Skåne, Isabelle Christiaens for RTBF
Cinematography
Lasse Barkfors
Editing
Lasse Barkfors, Signe Rebekka Kaufmann

IDFA history

2021
Dutch Premiere
Best of Fests
2018
Round Table Pitch

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IDFA history

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