What I Did in Fifth Grade

Boiling Point(en)

Jordan recounts a tense day where a false accusation by his teacher, Miss Rudell, pushes him to his breaking point, exposing the unfair dynamics between him, the teacher’s pet, and an undisciplined peer.

Blindsight(en)

Six blind Tibetan teenagers climb the Lhakpa-Ri peak of Mount Everest, led by seven-summit blind mountain-climber Erik Weihenmayer.

Mary Kay Letourneau: Notes On a Scandal(en)

With all the ingredients of a Hollywood movie, this sex scandal shocked, enthralled, and enraged 1990s America. An examination of the affair between Mary Kay Letourneau and her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau in 1997.

Teach Me If You Can(fr)

The three teachers Svetlana, Sandrine and Taslima teach children and young people in places that are hardly accessible for “normal” lessons - in a nomad tent under the snow cover of Siberia, in a hut in the bushland of Burkina Faso and on a school boat in Bangladesh. They share a common goal: to enable their students to have a better future through education.

Les chiens-loups(fr)

Bus 174(pt)

Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers. Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence's most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.

Spellbound(en)

This documentary follows 8 teens and pre-teens as they work their way toward the finals of the Scripps Howard national spelling bee championship in Washington D.C.

Looking for Ms. Locklear(en)

We met in first grade in Ms. Locklear’s class. During the summer of 2006, we decided to search for our beloved teacher. We chose not to use the internet or the telephone, but instead to rely on face-to-face contact with people. Looking for Ms. Locklear is a documentary chronicling our search, which led us far from home and into the company of a host of characters.

A, B, C... Z(sq)

Children get ready to start the first grade. They start learning the first letters.

First Day of School(fa)

A documentary about an Iranian boy's first day of school. The beginning of hardships and understanding the realities of life, and perhaps unwanted pain and suffering.

Resonance(en)

The film follows three renowned vocal coaches and their students during private lessons. As the pupils prepare for their upcoming final evaluations, perfect technique is expected to produce impeccable results. Listening primarily to their voices, we feel intensity and intimacy arise between teachers and students – an atmosphere in which transcendence is being built.

Memory Books(en)

In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.

Fish Story(cn)

J and Jacky are good friends who attend the same school. J is from a single-parent family, and will be taken care by Jacky’s family whenever his mother has to return to Mainland to renew her visa; such kind of story is not an isolated case. These families have been uprooted for a “better future” in Hong Kong, but is this “future” that the children really long to have? A Chinese saying: “How does one understand the joy of fish, if one is not a fish?” Will the adults really understand what the children want?

The Eye of the Storm(en)

The very first documentary about Jane Elliott's educational experiment about discrimination, which was originally produced for ABC News, in which she conducts an unforgettable lesson with her third-grade class in Riceville, Iowa.

Democracy Is ...(en)

The film is a controversy on democracy. Is our society really democratic? Can everyone be part of it? Or is the act of being part in democracy dependent to the access on technology, progression or any resources of information, as philosophers like Paul Virilio or Jean Baudrillard already claimed?

Narcotics: A Challenge to Youth(en)

An educational film sponsored and distributed by the Los Angeles-based Narcotic Educational Foundation of America and directed by Gilbert Lasky with financial assistance of the Woman’s Relief Corps targets teachers as well as junior and senior high school students in the war on drugs. Narcotics are classified and effects of opiates, stimulants, and barbiturates are summarized and dramatized

Record of Life: Those Who Fought in the Okawa Tsunami Trial(ja)

On March 11, 2011, Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki City was engulfed by a tsunami, and 74 children, or 70% of the school's children, were killed. 51 minutes elapsed between the earthquake and when the tsunami reached the school. The school was informed of the tsunami and a school bus was on standby, but students did not evacuate. Okawa Elementary was the only school that suffered a large number of casualties in this earthquake. This documentary follows the lawsuit that followed the disaster, where the parents sought the truth behind the tragedy.

Waiting for "Superman"(en)

Gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, Waiting for Superman is an impassioned indictment of the American school system from An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim.

Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine(en)

An intimate portrait of Matthew Shepard, the gay young man murdered in one of the most notorious hate crimes in U.S. history. Framed through a personal lens, it's the story of loss, love, and courage in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

Wright's Law(en)

Every now and then, we get a teacher who doesn't just connect with us -- they make us a better person in the world. Jeffrey Wright of Louisville, Ky. is one of those teachers. He uses wacky experiments to teach high school kids about science and the universe. But it's his own personal story about his relationship with his disabled son that shows his students the true meaning of life.