From All Movie Guide: A devastating portrait of inner-city children seeking the educational means to escape extreme poverty and the feeble opportunities available for them to do so, directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady primarily focus on three of the young men attending the Baraka School -- Devon, Richard, and Montrey -- for their moving life stories, charisma, and lucid intelligent commentary. The boys lead intense, uncertain lives, and the filmmakers are careful to respect their strength and determination. The program, while successful, is startling in its extremity, and some policy-minded viewers may feel disappointed with how little of its philosophy is detailed besides a broad outline. Ewing and Grady are not content, however, to offer mute praise of the program; the documentary follows the boys before, during, and after their experience at the Baraka School, which was closed due to security threats after their first year. In so doing, they track the difficulties in aiding such emotionally frayed pub...

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