Raising a School Shooter

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.