User Reviews

This documentary involves the viewer in a compelling process to get a former charter school in East Los Angeles to secure the ability to continue to offer a safe place for learning and growing for some of the most troubled at risk youth of the city.

The personal accounts and layers of the people involved, make you want to take action to help what is right in this story. People who care about the kids future and recognizing that you have to invest time, caring and education to turn the corner in these communities.

Very well portrayed and told throughout the process. Highly recommend seeing this if you have seen Waiting for Superman.

This film really got me thinking. Our system is broken and we are failing the most vulnerable people among us. My heart goes out to these kids! The combination of a bureaucratic school system, poverty and broken families all contribute to a horrific dropout rate for inner city students. Kids who don't graduate from high school are going to have an even more challenging time breaking the cycle of poverty. Some of the students portrayed in the movie are suffering from poor decisions that they have made (such as having babies). But they seem to sincerely be trying to turn their lives around through education. I hope that we start cutting red tape in the school system and start putting students first. The film gives a unique perspective on the struggles of these kids. A real eye opener!

Filmmakers Janine Foster McKenna and Stephanie Young Rosen weave a compelling narrative around a husband-and-wife team of educators who struggle to keep their charter school open and their students who have no other option for an education. And it packs quite a punch.

While the educator's feisty, tough-love approach to running her school during the threat of closure and challenging her at-risk students to take responsibility for their own futures drives the narrative, and frankly inspires, it is the filmmakers' deft weaving of several key student's stories that brings emotional weight and a very real sense of urgency to the proceedings. There are life and death stakes here, and the documentary's fly-on-the-wall style intermingled with candid interviews makes it palpable.

"Unschooled: Save Our Future" bears witness to our country's failed education system as well as shows there do exist at-risk teens who deeply want more than anything to better themselves and rise above the limitations imposed by their environment.

Highly recommended.