Waiting for "Superman"

Waiting for "Superman" (2010) is Davis Guggenheim's documentary, available to watch online on iFILM. The director of An Inconvenient Truth turns to America's public schools and lays out how the system fails its own kids.

Guggenheim follows five children from Harlem to Los Angeles, each chasing a place at a decent school. The catch: seats are scarce, and a lottery decides everything — a number pulled from a drum sorts the ones who get a shot from the ones who land back in an overcrowded local classroom. Alongside their stories, the film dissects why bureaucracy, unions and lifelong teacher tenure keep things stuck, and profiles reformer Geoffrey Canada as he tries to pry the system open.

It arrived loud and divisive: some called it an honest diagnosis, others a one-sided swing at teachers' unions. But the closing lottery scene — a child's future hanging on a drawn ball — hits harder than most fiction. One for anyone curious about how mass education works, and where it doesn't. Stream Waiting for "Superman" (2010) online on iFILM.