CUT: Teens and Self Injury (2007)

CUT: Teens and Self Injury provides an intimate look at a problem that affects thousands of young people, their families and friends. Resisting sensationalism and graphic images, the film draws its power from the voices of the teens themselves. They talk about the sources of their cutting: their experiences of alienation and inadequacy, their deep desire to feel, their sense of cutting as a part of the world they can control. They describe the resistance and denial that often greets their attempts to talk about their feelings and actions. And, crucially, they describe the ways in which they began to confront, and often overcome, their urge toward self-harm. Interviews with parents and mental health professionals help establish broader contexts for understanding the extent of the problem and ways of addressing it. Weaving in artworks created by the teens and music about self-injury, CUT's highlights include rock icon Shirley Manson's moving testimony concerning her own cutting. Fully aware of the extent of the problem, the film incorporates the perspectives of males and females, whites blacks and Asian Americans. Urgent, searching, and profoundly moving, CUT issues a call to bring the problem of self-injury out of the shadows and reminds us that the first step towards healing is an honest acknowledgement of reality.