The fresh new documentary Brooklyn Castle has an unlikely band of protagonists—a record-breaking and mostly minority chess team from an unassuming Brooklyn neighborhood—and a welcome, optimistic take on the modern school. My full review is at Film Journal International:

When documentaries take on schools as a subject, the film is either a lament for a nation’s crumbling educational edifice or a feel-good film about a band of plucky upstarts defying the odds. In either event, the assumption is generally that things are fairly horrendous, school-wise, and that only particularly lucky or unique groups can hope to win out. What makes Katie Dellamaggiore’s Brooklyn Castle so wonderful and fresh-feeling in many ways is how it neatly skirts those preassigned roles for the students, parents and teachers it follows around…

Brooklyn Castle is playing now in very limited release.

You can see the trailer here: