WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

Year: 2010
USA: Paramount Vantage
UK: Paramount Pictures UK
Cast: The Black Family, Geoffrey Canada, The Hill Family, The Esparza Family, George Reeves (archive footage), Michelle Rhee, Bill Strickland, Randi Weingarten
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Country: USA
USA & UK: 111 mins
USA Rated: PG for some thematic material, mild language and incidental smoking
UK Certificate: PG contains infrequent mild language
USA Release Date: 24 September 2010 (limited Release)
UK Release Date: 26 November 2010 (Limited Release)


Synopsis

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim reminds us that education “statistics” have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, whose stories make up the engrossing foundation of WAITING FOR SUPERMAN. 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, and ultimately questioning the role of unions in maintaining the status quo, 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.