Bulletproof explores the complexities of violence in schools by looking at the strategies employed to prevent it. The film takes an unsensational approach, simply following various people engaging with a society that has been shaped by the possibility of mass shootings.

For example: a woman concerned about the threat of violent attack creates a small cottage industry producing nondescript-looking hoodies made of bulletproof Kevlar; In a Las Vegas conference hall, vendors hawk technologies like in-class panic rooms and bulletproof whiteboards, but at the center of this group portrait are America’s schools.

Filmmaker Todd Chandler observes rituals that are instantly familiar, like homecoming parades, pep rallies, morning announcements, but these formalities become unfamiliar as well as strange, by the action movie trappings of our new normal: active shooter drills, constant surveillance, and armed teachers. Bulletproof forces the viewer to contend with difficult questions surrounding commerce, violence, and fear, but offers no easy answers. It showcases a deceptively quiet yet deeply troubling meditation on the forces that have led us to this strange place in American history.

Todd Chandler   |  U.S.A. |  2020 |  84 minutes