The Bowl is a new documentary that follows a team of six girls and their teacher as they prepare for and compete in the National High School Ethics Bowl—and you may be able to arrange an interactive screening of it in your town.

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A scene from “The Bowl”

Created by documentary filmmaker Eli Yetter-Bowman of Ethereal Films, The Bowl aims to capture the excitement and the value of young persons reasoning about complex moral issues.

The National High School Ethics Bowl organizes “competitive yet collaborative events in which students discuss real-life ethical issues.” Here’s how it works:

In each round of competition, teams take turns analyzing cases about complex ethical dilemmas and responding to questions and comments from the other team and from a panel of judges. An Ethics Bowl differs from a Speech and Debate competition in that students are not assigned opposing views; rather, they defend the position they actually hold or think is reasonable, provide each other with constructive criticism, and win by demonstrating that they have thought rigorously and systematically about the cases and engaged respectfully and supportively with all participants.

Yetter-Bowman was moved to create the documentary after nearly a decade of volunteering for ethics bowls and mentoring students. They appreciate how the program “broadens thinking for students,” pushing them towards “expansive, nuanced answers that cannot fit a multiple choice paradigm.”

About the film, Yetter-Bowman says, “We got so lucky… to follow such an inspiring group of students. Their journey is an excellent snapshot of how rewarding the ethics bowl experience can be.” They made the film “to expand the reach of both High School and all other forms of ethics bowl” adding, “as a philosophy graduate, I know that philosophy is very cool, but we believe that this film is an excellent vehicle to help convince the public of that too.”

The film will eventually air on PBS, but ahead of that, the production company is “rolling out an early-access tour to universities, K-12 schools, and public libraries.” They’re doing this via “interactive screening to turn rooms into lively public-philosophy conversations.” Yetter-Bowman says, “Our whole motive behind this film is to promote this type of thinking among young folks so making educators aware of this resource is very important to us.”

They report that “we just had a full-house premiere in Cary, NC and the festival host called it ‘the most fun I’ve ever had at a film screening'”.

If you’re interested in setting up a screening at your university or in your town, you can request that on the film’s website.

The trailer for the documentary is below.