On the last day of school, a busload of Bronx teens takes an epic ride into a summer of possibility in this loose-limbed, innovative and affectionate group portrait. Featuring an infectious soundtrack and the real-life students who developed the story, Gondry’s (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) vision captures an entire world of high school—the bookworms and bullies, mean girls and dropouts—in all its glorious unpredictability. –IFC Film Center
Michel Gondry (director of ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY, and countless mind-bending music videos that are works of art in their own right) collaborated with a talented group of students from the South Bronx to offer this raucous, entertaining, at times bittersweet slice of life. A.O. Scott from The New York Times states, “To call this thrillingly original, deeply felt movie a coming-of-age story would be to insult it with cliché. It’s much more the story, or rather a series of interlocking, incomplete stories, about what it feels like to be a certain age and to feel caught, as the title suggests, between the desire to be yourself and the longing to fit in.”