ESCUELA (School)

D: Hannah Weyer.

Documentary Feature Competition Filmmaker Hannah Weyer’s great gift is seeing the decency of marginalized people and bringing their stories to life without condescension or casting them as salt-of-the-earth archetypes. In Escuela, Weyer follows migrant farmworker Liliana Luis during her first year of high school. Liliana is like other high-school girls, worried about clothes, make-up, and boys, but her education is a chaotic experience spread between Texas and California school systems ill equipped to meet the needs of migrant students. However, Escuela is not an indictment of the education system. It’s the story of one girl’s challenge to navigate the coming-of-age experience while trying to keep a grip on the future an education can provide. Escuela‘s calm, candle-like vigilance is remarkably illuminating and deeply affecting. More important, it opens viewers to the lives of people some of us may never come in contact with, and makes us care. (3/16, Alamo, 12:15pm) Escuela won the Special Jury Award for Documentary Feature.

This article appears in March 15 • 2002.

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