Go see this movie!

The Boys of Baraka is opening soon, possibly even tomorrow, in 26 cities across the country. I was lucky enough to catch the movie last year at the SILVERDOCS festival and it was amazing. It was so touching and well-done that nearly everyone in the sold-out showing gave a standing ovation. I don't care who you are or what kind of movies you like. Go see this movie! Here is a description of the film from the SILVERDOCS website:

Seventy-six percent of black males in Baltimore don't graduate from high school. The reality of this statistic is depicted and confronted in THE BOYS OF BARAKA. For those middle-class viewers intoxicated with class aspiration, it may be easy to forget the fight for survival being waged on the streets of Baltimore and other cities. This film comes as a powerful reminder--not an indictment, just a reminder.

This is HOOP DREAMS in a classroom. The most troubled and least likely to succeed boys are chosen from the public schools of Baltimore and given the opportunity to turn their lives around by attending the Baraka School in Kenya, East Africa--an experience designed to prepare them for high school in two years and life in the world thereafter. We meet four boys, Richard, Romesh, Devon and Montrey, whose lives we follow from passport issuance to summer vacation and to a challenging fork in the road.

What this film refuses to sugarcoat is that this program's transformative power is the only thing standing between these young men and drug dealing, addiction, academic failure or worse, and the boys know it. They endure homesickness, anger, fear and culture shock to shed their disruptive, misunderstood, traumatized, academically uninterested selves. The school teaches them about reconciliation and teamwork and introduces them to the achievers buried within each of them. But most importantly, it gives them hope. And some of them soar.