Review | ‘Unpunished Pain’: the latent memory that bullying is a pending issue
“Bullying is a form of torture for people who are building their personality and who are developing their mentality.”
“It’s a child’s thing” is a phrase that is said repeatedly when talking about bullying. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose a child, but not in any way, but through suicide. Imagine that your own child has gone to such extremes for a reason you don’t fully know .
The case of Kira, Óscar, Laura and Ilan is shocking. It is a constant reminder that we are not doing everything we can do against bullying, a scourge that we have been fighting for a long time. And the problem lies in the schools themselves, in the system, as Kira’s father, José Manuel López , recalled after the premiere of the documentary ‘Dolor Impune’ in Barcelona. Awarded as best documentary feature film and the audience prize at the Mostra Internacional De Cinema Documental De Montaverner .
I met José Manuel through an opinion article he wrote in the summer of 2021, a few months after he lost his daughter. I was the first journalist to talk about his case and give a voice to his parents when no other communication and press professional did so. And I feel proud of it . Recently, a person I know told me that he will never forget when a journalist gave voice to more than 100 people in 2013 on the radio, among them, this person, due to a problem with a factory in Catalonia, and I know that José Manuel always He will remember me, just as I will never forget him.
It was he who illuminated the way for me to talk about a topic about which little by little we have more information, a silence that children and adolescents keep inside. I accompanied him from a distance almost every day in the case of his daughter and how the investigation was progressing. His wife, María José, said after the premiere that we should break the silence, and this documentary breaks all barriers.
‘Dolor Impune’, directed by Gabriel Chicano , is a latent reminder that bullying continues to be a pending issue for our entire society. Because bullying is not a child’s thing, the suffering of minors is not a child’s thing , humiliation is not a child’s thing . Bullying is a form of torture for people who are building their personality and developing their mentality.
Professionals such as Emilio Calatayud , Juvenile Judge of Granada, participate in this piece ; Carla Vall y Durán , lawyer and criminologist; Javier Urra , forensic psychologist and first Defender of Madrid; Carmen Cabestany , professor and president No to Harassment is Born; Marta Ochoa , head of Neurology at HM Hospitals; Pilu Hernández Dópico , teacher and trainer.
This documentary was needed. It was necessary to narrate in first person the pain of the families, of their loved ones, of those who fight every day for justice to be done.
That’s what ‘Unpunished Pain’ is about : talking about something that seems taboo in society, but is a real problem that is experienced every day in the classrooms of schools and institutes.
It is time to break the silence, to raise our voices and say that the time has come for us all to work together: families, young people, public administrations and educational centers.
