Thoughts & Prayers

According to Everytown research, in 2025 there were at least 163 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, resulting in 54 deaths and 149 injuries nationally. But U.S. schoolkids don’t just live with the abstract fear of a school shooting. They are faced with its concrete reality every time they participate in active school shooter drills or interface with a booming $3 billion active shooter preparedness industry that sells parents, teachers, administrators, and students alike everything from bullet-proof backpacks to desks that are designed to make everyone feel safe. Zackary Canepari and Jessica Dimmock’s mordantly sly documentary tackles the absurdity of this new normal with biting humor and razor-sharp social commentary. At its heart, the film’s juxtaposition of teary, knowing, and oftentimes heartbreaking schoolkid testimonials with increasingly implausible capitalist-driven attempts to profit from this epidemic is a damning indictment of the U.S. response to the seemingly neverending epidemic of school shootings. For offering up a depressingly timely dissection of a wholly American crisis that reveals the very empty political promises its title refers to, Thoughts & Prayers wins a Peabody award.