New to DVD this week:
ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL
Director:
Pascal Plisson
Premiere:
Champs-Elysées 2013
Select Festivals:
Locarno, COLCOA LA, Athens, Mill Valley, Portland,
About:
Kids from Kenya, Morocco, Argentina, and India walk hours just to go to school.
Plisson’s earnest project aims to educate viewers of the challenges faced by children around the world in seeking basic education. To that end, he follows four tykes on treacherous trips to school which in some cases take four hours, traverse punishing terrain, and run afoul of dangerous wild animals. It’s well-meaning family programming, but this overly slick production is clearly scripted and stretches its concept ridiculously thin, eschewing providing any substantive information – or proper sense of personality – about its subjects in favor of milking as much audience sympathy as possible from the premise.
what (not) to doc 