Bully

"Bully" (2011) is an American documentary you can watch online on iFILM. Director Lee Hirsch spent a full school year inside the lives of five families whose children were being bullied — on buses, in hallways, at home, online.

Kirk Smalley lost his thirteen-year-old son Tyler, who died by suicide after years of relentless harassment. The other kids in the film still get on the bus every morning. Hirsch's camera rarely editorializes; it just stays in the room long enough that the silence of the adults around them becomes the real subject.

The MPAA initially handed "Bully" an R rating, which would have kept most American teenagers from seeing it in theaters. The distributor released it unrated after a very public fight over the classification, and the film ended up screened in classrooms nationwide. A blunt document — not easy to watch, and hard to argue with. Stream "Bully" online on iFILM.