There are difficulties along the way, none of them slighted in this award-winning documentary, as well as a surprise at the end that's as sobering to the viewer as it is to the children.

| Jan 17, 2018

It's galling to think American kids must go abroad for a chance to turn their lives around. But it's also inspiring to see the changes that are possible.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 14, 2006

A potent mixture of heartbreak and crushing irony.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 3, 2006

A potent emotional experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 3, 2006

Here is a movie that makes you want to do something. Cry, or write a check, or howl with rage.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 2, 2006

This is a gripping documentary look at four Baltimore youngsters sent to a school in rural Kenya that specializes in dealing with troubled American boys from the inner city.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 17, 2006

A film that might have been a dry exercise in earnest nonfiction filmmaking becomes a soaring, artistically complex testament to survival, character and hope.

| Feb 9, 2006

Feels achingly sad and frustratingly incomplete.

Full Review | Jan 19, 2006

The Boys of Baraka's greatest service is in shining a light on a problem many people don't want to talk about: our willingness to throw away the lives of kids who grow up in dangerous neighborhoods far from quality schools.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 19, 2006

Ewing and Grady's film is determined to look past harrowing statistics and root for its subjects to beat the odds. It doesn't always happen.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 24, 2005

The results are amazing, though bittersweet, and demonstrate how complicated and expensive it is (though not impossible) to break the cycle of poverty, crime and lack of education.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 2, 2005

This rich documentary proves that inner city boys have a better chance of thriving if removed from their poor neighborhoods.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 30, 2005

Ewing and Grady prefer to make their case through illustration rather than rhetoric, but they fall critically short in detailing the students' transformative school experiences.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 30, 2005

An uplifting documentary.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 30, 2005

The Boys of Baraka's heart may be in the right place, but its portrait of poor Baltimore kids selected to attend boarding school in Kenya is rife with suspect perspectives.

| Nov 29, 2005

A portrait of the nature-vs.-nurture debate in which external factors are depicted as weighing heavily on children's fates.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 22, 2005