Thoughts & Prayers

Nov 12, 2025

1h 28m

★ 5.7

Is the new normal... normal?

Overview

In a dystopic America, children are taught how to prepare for school shootings through elaborate drills. Yet what are intended as self-defense mechanisms are themselves deeply traumatic for students, parents, educators, and entire communities.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

HBO Documentary Films

Tony Tina

Thoughts & Prayers Trailers

Cast

No Cast found.

Louder Than Guns is a journey through rural, urban, and suburban America that humanizes all sides of this country’s polarized gun debate through the power of music, civil discourse, and unexpected common ground. The film tackles the extremely complicated and sensitive subject of gun violence which has become politically divisive in an open and all encompassing approach, inviting people from all aspects of the country to join in a conversation and speak their peace.

0.0

The Killer at Thurston High

Jan 18, 2000

In May 1998, a year before the massacre at Columbine High, 15-year-old Kip Kinkel murdered his mother and father, and then opened fire at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, killing two fellow students and wounding 25 others. In this first in-depth television examination of a school shooter, FRONTLINE reveals the intimate inside story of how the “shy and likeable” Kip Kinkel from a solid middle-class family became the boy police call “a cold-hearted killer.”

4.0

Kill Zone USA

Dec 2, 2014

30,000 people die in the US each year by firearms. Collateral damage of an undeclared civil war, from which the arms industry has benefited for decades under German and European participation. Starting from the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, this documentary examines why we can't stop the arms madness.

6.7

Playing Columbine

Nov 7, 2008

Chronicles the history of the game "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!." The film traces back the 16-bit role-playing game to its inception, through the 2006 shooting at Dawson College in which the game was singled out by the media as a "murder simulator" that "trained" the shooter, and finally the game's removal from the list of finalists at the Slamdance 2007 Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition - prompting half the entries and a sponsor to pull out of the festival in protest. Written by tolka

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0.0

In Memoriam

Oct 12, 2019

In the United States, there is an active shooter incident every 12 days. In Memoriam shows the wrenching perspective of wounded survivors, grieving relatives, and heroes of the horrific attacks at the Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Music Festival, the Sutherland Springs Baptist Church in Texas, and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

8.0

Bulletproof

May 28, 2020

Bulletproof explores the complexities of violence in schools by looking at the strategies employed to prevent it. The film observes the longstanding rituals that take place in and around American schools: homecoming parades, basketball practice, morning announcements, and math class. Unfolding alongside these scenes are a collection of newer traditions: lockdown drills, teacher firearms training, metal detector screenings, and school safety trade shows. Bulletproof asks what these rituals reflect back at us, looking beyond immediate causes and responses to mass shootings in a cinematic meditation on the array of forces that shape the culture of violence in the United States.

6.6

The Truth vs. Alex Jones

Mar 11, 2024

Filmed over four years with unprecedented access, this documentary chronicles the riveting courtroom drama of two defamation lawsuits brought by Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims' families against Alex Jones and his website, InfoWars.

0.0

Beyond December 6

May 1, 1991

One year after the tragedy that took the lives of fourteen female students, Montreal’s École Polytechnique has returned to something resembling normalcy. Nathalie Provost is a survivor of the shooting at the engineering school. Today, with friends, she opens up. About the tragedy, about feminism. About racism and sexism. About the fact that society has difficulty accepting difference. And, above all, about life, which must go on beyond December 6.

6.0

Print It Black

Apr 28, 2024

After the Robb Elementary school shooting in Texas, local Uvalde Leader-News journalists are left to report on the fallout – and on one of their staff members. Reporter Kimberly Rubio rises to national prominence as an advocate for gun reform after her ten-year-old daughter, Lexi, is killed in the shooting. Through the journalists’ reporting, we witness the social fabric of this small Texas town unravel as Kimberly and other victims’ families search for accountability from law enforcement and local leaders. The documentary also shines a light on the critical role of community journalism, at a time when local newspapers are folding rapidly across the country.

5.9

Lessons from a School Shooting: Notes from Dunblane

Sep 28, 2018

In the wake of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that took the lives of 20 first graders and their teachers, local clergymen Father Bob Weiss receives a letter from a fellow priest in Dunblane, Scotland, whose community suffered an eerily similar fate in 1996. From across the Atlantic, the two priests forge a poignant bond through the shared experience of trauma and healing.

0.0

Surviving Sandy Hook

Apr 1, 2015

Investigative documentary following three families involved in the Sandy Hook shooting, as they try to make sense of the tragedy and find a way to move on and rebuild their lives.

7.0

Pekka. Inside the Mind of a School Shooter

Jan 28, 2015

On November 7 2007, eighteen year old Pekka goes to school armed in Jokela, a quiet town North of Finland’s capital, Helsinki. On that tragic day, he kills eight people. The director reconstructs Pekka’s story through conversations with his parents, classmates and teachers. The oppressive circumstances that brought on the young man’s tragic action are slowly revealed clearer and clearer and the spectator realizes that these situations are not unique to Pekka from Jokela.

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0.0

For Our Lives: Parkland

Apr 30, 2018

Since the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, ABC News: Nightline producers have been on the ground in Parkland, Florida, capturing intimate moments as a community rebuilds. For Our Lives: Parkland is hosted by Elaine Welteroth, who was on the ground for "March For Our Lives," to meet the students on their biggest stage yet.

7.1

Fahrenheit 11/9

Sep 10, 2018

Michael Moore's provocative documentary explores the two most important questions of the Trump Era: How did we get here, and how do we get out.

0.0

The Dunblane Tapes

Feb 26, 2026

After the 1996 mass shooting at Dunblane, a campaign was launched to ban private handguns in the UK. This remarkable story can now be told with unseen video filmed by a bereaved parent.

7.3

All the Empty Rooms

Aug 31, 2025

A journalist and a photographer set out to memorialize the bedrooms left behind by children killed in school shootings.

6.6

White Rage

Nov 27, 2015

About Lauri, and through him the story of other victims of both school bullying and a separate childhood trauma: victims full of white rage, which may lead to school shootings and other extreme acts of violence. The film is also about our society: a society without sufficient understanding or desire to address the emergence of school violence.

6.7

After Parkland

Apr 26, 2019

In the aftermath of the February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead, filmmakers Emily Taguchi and Jake Lefferman traveled to Parkland and began filming with students who endured gunfire and the parents who lost their children in the crosshairs. "After Parkland" is an intimate chronicle of families as they navigate their way through the unthinkable; reckoning with unexpected loss, journeying through grief, and searching for new meaning.

6.3

American Anarchist

Sep 2, 2016

The story of one of the most infamous books ever written, "The Anarchist Cookbook," and the role it's played in the life of its author, now 65, who wrote it at 19 in the midst of the counterculture upheaval of the late '60s and early '70s.