Filed under: Previews, News, Trailers
After playing in only New York and Los Angeles this past weekend and grossing an estimated $141,000 from just four theaters, the critically acclaimed documentary 'Waiting for Superman' will expand to the top ten markets on Oct.1.
Lending his support to the film is Grammy winning artist John Legend, whose latest song 'Shine' is played at the end credits of the film.
In speaking with the Wall St. Journal, the Ohio native states, "The story is heartbreaking and gut-wrenching. It tells the story of these kids who have to enter a lottery to try to get to the best school in their neighborhood, and if they don't they're likely to go to a school that produces a lot of dropouts and not many college attendees. So, their life is being decided by the flip of a coin, by a lottery. And knowing that, and knowing that some of their potential could go to waste, I felt inspired to write something."
Directed by Davis Guggenheim, who won an Academy Award for his previous documentary, 'An Inconvenient Truth.' 'Superman' was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, where it won the Audience Award.
For a nation that proudly declared it would leave no child behind, America continues to do so at alarming rates. Despite increased spending and politicians' promises, our buckling public-education system, once the best in the world, routinely forsakes the education of millions of children.
'Waiting for Superman' reminds us that education "statistics" have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, whose stories make up the engrossing foundation the film. As he follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth, Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying "drop-out factories" and "academic sinkholes," methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems. However, embracing the belief that good teachers make good schools, Guggenheim offers hope by exploring innovative approaches taken by education reformers and charter schools that have-in reshaping the culture-refused to leave their students behind.