The Hunting Ground

This highly upsetting Kirby Dick documentary examines the extreme prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses, and the disgusting ways that school administrators silence victims and shield sexual predators in order to protect their reputations. Rape survivors from august Ivy League universities such as Harvard and Stanford courageously tell horror story after horror story about institutional indifference and malicious coverups perpetrated by the colleges where they trusted their futures. A litany of offenders is indicted, from the fraternity industry to student-athlete overindulgence to administrative greed, and the film could have toppled from ambition, but Dick is an old hand at this sort of outrage caffeine (he also made the 2012 documentary The Invisible War, about rape coverups in the military). The Hunting Ground is smart and fluid and well-constructed, although not particularly cinematic—the emotions are raw, even when the filmmaking feels too cozy and safe. D.B.