Ask Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim what drew him to documenting the experience of five young students trapped in a failing school system after having filmed a few of the world’s most famous musicians and political figures and he’ll tell you: he fell in love.
“Falling in love [with a project] helps you tell your story,” Guggenheim explains about his latest film, “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” a documentary about the deterioration of quality education in America’s public school system. Often times in the educational debate, the people who are most affected—the children—are left out. This film aims to give voice to the youngsters who are trapped in a system that, according to Guggenheim, meets the needs of adults through things such as union support and tenure, but neglects its responsibilities to students who, in many areas, are denied the privilege of a decent education and must enter a lottery to even entertain the idea of attending a better school. After directing “It Might Get Loud” (about the musical process and collaboration of Jack White, U2’s The Edge, and Jimmy Page), and winning an Academy Award for the wildly controversial “An Inconvenient Truth” (with Al Gore), “Waiting for ‘Superman’” was inspired by the troubling guilt Guggenheim felt every morning as he drove past three low-performing public schools to drop his children off at a prestigious private school. Driving by these schools, Guggenheim began to ask some difficult questions: “What about the kids who had no other choice? What kind of education were they getting? What were the assurances that they would have the chance to live out their dreams, to fulfill their vast potential?” To answer these questions, he embarked on a two-year quest to meet various public school students who are, essentially, waiting for a “Superman” to help them overcome the situations that hinder their chance to attend college and build a better future for themselves. Thus, the “Waiting for ‘Superman’” project was born.
Through the eyes of five students in Los Angeles, the Bronx, Washington D.C., Silicon Valley, and Harlem, Guggenheim follows these five students as they apply to the blossoming charter schools in their area—schools whose statistics ensure graduation and a 99 percent college acceptance rate. Because space is limited, hopeful applicants must enter a lottery to win a spot at these schools. For many of these students, the chance of winning is one in 100, sometimes more.
“The purpose of this film is to spark political will,” Guggenheim explains. “Get people to care… that will lead to real change.” He is astonished that in twenty-first century America, educational inequality is the reason so many people’s chance to live the American dream is obscured. For the students and parents in this film who are “fighting like hell,” as Guggenheim passionately states, to improve their opportunities, their fate is dependent of the numerical order of 5 bouncing balls. “The lottery is a metaphor,” says Guggenheim. “It’s playing bingo with [students’] futures.”
The audiences who will most be affected by this film, Guggenheim tells me, are college students. You, reading this, and I, writing, are the success stories. We have gone through the educational system and made it to the Nirvana of higher education: college. Degree in hand, we will graduate to a world of better opportunities. But what about those who may not get this far? This film is an emotional journey that arms audiences with hard facts and motivation to make changes in favor of equal education. “Waiting for ‘Superman’” has audiences rooting for the success of those five students, while inspiring gratitude in the ones blessed with the privilege of attending college and thus, have won the lottery of life.