Parents' Guide to The Infamous Future

Tender and moving, this documentary introduces viewers to some of the insiders that make this NYC school special, and demonstrates precisely why it needs to exist. Footage of New York's concrete jungle and grim statistics (the national high school graduation rate for black and Latino males in America is 59%) contrast greatly with scenes shot inside Eagle classrooms and auditoriums, in which students chant uplifting maxims in unison, ritualistically water a school plant, and sling their arms casually and affectionately over each other's shoulders. Teachers hug their students, get weepy when discussing the potential they see in them, and exhort them to bring their best selves to the classroom and to support one another while doing so.

In The Infamous Future's best moments, we follow student Joshua Perez to his home in the South Bronx. He's graduating this year; the first class of Eagle students who went all the way through the program. He's headed to college on a full ride scholarship in a few months, his mother is overjoyed. She wasn't able to finish school, she says through tears; she didn't have the support. Things are going to be different for her son, despite the fact, as Eagle Foundation president David Banks reminds the graduates, they're making the transition from a place where they're seen and supported into a world that doesn't care about them, that doesn't know their potential and talents, where positive media images of kids like them are rare. The odds are daunting. But The Infamous Future at least provides some hope, from a distance, that the boys and young men we see will be part of things changing.