1. The Killer at Thurston High
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.”
2. Down in Dallas Town
Through interviews with people on the street and songs recorded to memorialize JFK in the mid-1960s, the film explores the impact of the November 22, 1963 assassination on issues in today’s world, from lingering conspiracy theories to the proliferation of gun violence, homelessness, and the scourge of K-2.
3. The Mechanics of Fluids (La mécanique des fluides)
In 2018, a user called AnathematicAnarchist published a suicide note in an online forum for incels – a subculture of heterosexual men whose self-pity, misogyny and fantasies of violence dominate the internet in many places and trigger offline actions in some. Did he really take his own life? Is America responsible for his death, as he claims in his text? A search for clues in the darkest corners of the net, an essay about pain and loneliness in the age of algorithms.
It has an average vote of 7.357 on TMDB.
4. Bowling for Columbine
This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionally protected Uzi. From a look at the Columbine High School security camera tapes to the home of Oscar-winning NRA President Charlton Heston, from a young man who makes homemade napalm with The Anarchist's Cookbook to the murder of a six-year-old girl by another six-year-old. Bowling for Columbine is a journey through the US, through our past, hoping to discover why our pursuit of happiness is so riddled with violence.
It has an average vote of 7.532 on TMDB.
5. 36 Seconds: Portrait of a Hate Crime (36 Seconds: Portrait of a Hate Crime)
On February 10th, 2015, it took Craig Hicks 36 seconds to extinguish the lives of three young, Muslim Americans. Before they can grieve, the families are forced to become activists to set the record straight about the murders.
6. Murder: No Apparent Motive
This documentary about serial killers and FBI Behavioral Sciences profilers features interviews with Ed Kemper and Ted Bundy as well as crime victims and law enforcement officials. The film includes some dramatic recreations.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
7. Trigger: The Ripple Effect of Gun Violence
Documentary that frames gun violence as a Disaster and Public Health issue by taking an in depth look at how one shooting impacts individuals, families and communities, while also giving voice to the questions and insights that arise from these conversations. In the documentary, all those scarred by gun violence eventually arrived at the same question: "Why...Why did this happen to us?" After looking at these in depth experiences of gun violence "Trigger turns its attention to the bigger question: "What can we do to prevent gun violence?"
8. Lessons from a School Shooting: Notes from Dunblane
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.
It has an average vote of 5.8 on TMDB.
9. Obituaries
A chronicle of lives lost in a school shooting. In the wake of another tragedy, we get a glimpse of each victim and see who they were, who they loved, who they hurt, and who they wanted to be.
10. Pitch Black
Pitch Black takes us inside the claustrophobic worlds of three young men immersed in the online black-pill subculture, as they struggle to reckon with their actions.
11. G is for Gun: The Arming of Teachers in America
A growing program in Ohio is training school staff to respond to active shooter situations with guns. Often reflecting a multitude of social issues, explore what both sides have to say about the issue, and the divide it has created in the town of Sidney, Ohio.
12. A Wolfpack Called Ernesto (Una jauría llamada Ernesto)
World-renowned Mexican filmmaker Everardo González brings us inside the chilling world of Ernesto, an amalgam of various teenage boys, who, in choosing a gun and a life of organized crime, becomes both victim and perpetrator.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
13. Acts of Violence
A riveting expose about the personalities of murderers and their motives. This 72 minute film covers the McDonalds' restaurant massacre, President Reagan's assassination attempt, serial murderer Henry Lee Lucas and others.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
14. After Parkland
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.
It has an average vote of 6.7 on TMDB.
15. Ricochet
When a young woman is shot by an undocumented immigrant on Pier 14 in San Francisco, the incident ignites a political and media furor that culminates in Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States. In the eye of this storm, two public defenders fight to reveal the truth.
16. Black Thoughts
A man that is a stranger, is an incredibly easy man to hate. However, walking in a stranger’s shoes, even for a short while, can transform a perceived adversary into an ally. Power is found in coming to know our neighbor’s hearts. For in the darkness of ignorance, enemies are made and wars are waged, but in the light of understanding, family extends beyond blood lines and legacies of hatred crumble.
It has an average vote of 5.5 on TMDB.
17. Shots Fired
Amid record police shootings in Utah, an investigation into the use of deadly force in the state with Frontline's local journalism partner The Salt Lake Tribune.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
18. The Truth vs. Alex Jones
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.
It has an average vote of 7.7 on TMDB.
19. Inside The Secret World of Incels
A never-before-seen look at the incel community, an online subculture to which multiple mass murders and hate crimes against women have been attributed.
It has an average vote of 4.8 on TMDB.
20. Ordinary Men: The “Forgotten Holocaust” (Ganz normale Männer - Der „vergessene Holocaust“)
Six million Jews died during World War II, both in the extermination camps and murdered by the mobile commandos of the Einsatzgruppen and police battalions, whose members shot men, women and children, day after day, obediently, as if it were a normal job, a fact that is hardly known today. Who were these men and how could they commit such crimes?
It has an average vote of 7.7 on TMDB.