Bullying

RT (2024)

Film Review

Russian with English subtites

Accord to the filmmakers, school bullying has significantly increased in Russia (it hasn’t increased in New Zealand – historically has been an integral part of Kiwi culture, not only in the schools but in the workplace).

The film indicates that 55% of Russian students surveyed reported issues with bullying. Thirty-nine percent of this bullying occurs on social.

The film focuses on a Russian teenager who stabbed a classmate with a knife after a long history of bullying by his classmates, a girl who was bullied for being overweight (which she ended by joining classmates in bullying another fat student) and a third girl who was bullied on social media. Her bullies eventually tried to blackmail her over an obscene photo they posted, leading her to try to sell a kidney online to pay them off.

There is an in-depth interview with the boy’s mother, who has fought for two years to get the school and the bullies’ parents to acknowledge the role of bullying in the knife attack. The filmmakers also play a recorded call with the school principal, who flatly denies any bullying occurred. Her son Vlad remains in a psychiatric hospital two year after the attack.

The filmmakers also show excerpts of a recent Russian play about bullying and a school anti-bullying workshop. The students responding most strongly to the play and the workshop were “onlookers” too scared to report bullying incidents to authorities.  authorities.