In his documentary "The Bully Project," Emmy-winning director Lee Hirsch spends a year with five kids who are regularly harassed or physically battered at school. The film takes an intimate look at the effect the abuse has on the students, their families and their schools. Some cope successfully. Other stories have a tragic end.

Though Hirsch's film doesn't draw on Minnesota examples, he tells a story with local relevance, as the Anoka-Hennepin School District's recent rash of student suicides draws national attention. Eight students killed themselves over the past two years, several allegedly distraught over anti-gay taunts. The school district dictates that when issues of sexual orientation arise in class, teachers must take a neutral stance, a policy that prompted a lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other groups this summer.

Hirsch, whose film opens the Twin Cities Film Festival on Tuesday, sees mean-spirited harassment as "something that reaches from the playground to the halls of power." Speaking by phone last week, he said "bullying is something that's reflected in all aspects of our society. It's all around us and absolutely celebrated in popular culture. So much of reality TV is a group destruction mentality."

Hirsch, himself the victim of bullying in his Long Island, N.Y., middle school, said the goal of his film was "to create an air of undeniability about bullying, to make it stop being about statistics and make it tangible."

His cameras capture painful scenes of physical abuse, insults and threats, with school bus rides that resemble mob scenes from "Lord of the Flies."

Problem met with a shrug

Adults, including school authorities, often respond with a shrug, saying it's so common it must be a normal part of growing up.

Their advice -- to toughen up, shrug it off, or shake hands and make friends with a tormentor -- is woefully inadequate. The intimidators play dumb, shift their tactics, or pass on the role of abuser to others in their clique. It's a dynamic Hirsch remembered from his own childhood, when he was unable to get support from school administrators or understanding from parents.

For some, the pressure builds to a breaking point. Alex, from Sioux City, Iowa, enters seventh grade fearful that it will be another chapter in an ongoing story of humiliation. "Sometimes they push me so far, it makes me want to be the bully," he says.

Fourteen-year-old Ja'Meya from Yazoo County, Miss., was teased remorselessly on her hourlong school bus ride. She was imprisoned for threatening her seatmates with her mother's gun.

Others seem destined for happier times beyond high school. When 16-year-old Kelby of Tuttle, Okla., came out as lesbian, she was roughed up by boys and even deliberately struck by a minivan full of classmates, an incident she laughs off with robust good humor. A star athlete with a generous supply of self-confidence and supportive friends, she's positive that a better life awaits her.

Two families in "The Bully Project" lost sons to bullying-related suicides. They channeled their frustration with the culture of denial about the problem into direct action, convening community discussions and setting up social-media forums to publicize the problem and explore solutions. That's a tactic Hirsch will discuss when he presents the film in person at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Showplace Icon theater in St. Louis Park.