Advanced Search >
Help Me Search

Movies

Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores

Wide Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Limited Releases
Now In Theaters

sort by namesort by score

58 (Untitled)
96 35 Shots of Rum
56 Adam
39 Adventures of Power
66 Afterschool
73 Amreeka
49 Antichrist
76 Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86 Beaches of Agnes, The
71 Big Fan
65 Black Dynamite
76 Bliss
26 Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44 Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81 Bright Star
76 Broken Embraces
70 Bronson
62 Cloud 9
65 Coco Before Chanel
69 Cold Souls
60 Collapse
82 Cove, The
75 Crude
82 Damned United, The
53 Dare
50 Defamation
67 Departures
70 Earth Days
85 Education, An
55 Endgame
88 Fantastic Mr. Fox
31 Fix
49 Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80 Food, Inc.
xx From Mexico with Love
28 Gentlemen Broncos
72 Good Hair
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Horse Boy, The
74 House of the Devil, The
xx How to Seduce Difficult Women
26 I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70 It Might Get Loud
46 Killing Kasztner
43 Little Traitor, The
34 Looking for Palladin
80 Lorna's Silence
46 Love Hurts
84 Maid, The
45 Mammoth
75 Messenger, The
55 Missing Person, The
59 More Than a Game
34 Motherhood
62 My One and Only
48 New York, I Love You
66 No Impact Man
26 Oh My God
68 Paranormal Activity
68 Paris
79 Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73 Red Cliff
69 September Issue, The
79 Serious Man, A
65 Skin
41 Splinterheads
42 Staten Island
50 Stoning of Soraya M., The
58 Storm
82 Sun, The
49 Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73 That Evening Sun
61 Trucker
49 Turning Green
83 U2 3D
45 Uncertainty
67 Visual Acoustics
32 War on Kids
67 Way We Get By, The
65 Wedding Song, The
xx White on Rice
59 William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74 Woman in Berlin, A
43 Women in Trouble
69 Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Boys of Baraka, The

EMAILPRINTITVS

Boys of Baraka, The reviews
71
7.8 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 20 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 5 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >

Movie Info

Genre(s): Documentary

Written by:

Directed by: Heidi Ewing
Rachel Grady

Release Date:
Theatrical: November 30, 2005
DVD: June 6, 2006

Running Time: 83 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: Not Rated

On September 12, 2002 twenty "at risk" 12-year-old boys from the tough streets of inner-city Baltimore left home to attend the 7th and 8th grade at Baraka, an experimental boarding school located in Kenya, East Africa. Here, faced with a strict academic and disciplinary program as well as the freedom to be normal teenage boys, these brave kids began the daunting journey towards putting their lives on a fresh path. This documentary focuses on four of these boys and captures their amazing journey. (Loki Films)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

TV Guide Ken Fox

Warmly funny and very moving.

Read Full Review >
100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Overflowing with comedy and drama, The Boys of Baraka unfolds on the mean streets of Baltimore and in the wide-open spaces of Kenya.

Read Full Review >
100

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

The Boys of Baraka leaves you outraged in the way only the best documentaries can.

Read Full Review >
88

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

There are many tragedies and accomplishments here, without the engineered uplift afflicting any number of lesser documentaries.

Read Full Review >
80

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Ewing and Grady could have done a better job filling in each boy's back story, as well as explaining exactly how Baraka started and what its agenda is. But the film is clearly a labor of love, portraying the lives of its subjects with tremendous intimacy and passion.

Read Full Review >
80

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A moving, troubling documentary. Moving because of the nature of the problem it explores, troubling because the film can't help but underline that simple solutions are never going to present themselves, no matter how much we want them to.

Read Full Review >
80

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Rich, sweet, densely layered and deeply satisfying. A film that might have been a dry exercise in earnest nonfiction filmmaking becomes a soaring, artistically complex testament to survival, character and hope.

Read Full Review >
80

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Sensitive, intelligent, enlightening, and sometimes surprising.

Read Full Review >
80

Film Threat Eric Campos

An entertaining experience as the filmmakers focus on a few select boys who provide a wealth of charm as they struggle with their new surroundings.

Read Full Review >
75

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The results are amazing, though bittersweet, and demonstrate how complicated and expensive it is (though not impossible) to break the cycle of poverty, crime and lack of education.

Read Full Review >
75

New York Post V.A. Musetto

Seventy percent of black boys in Baltimore do not graduate from high school. They're more likely to land in jail -- or a cemetery. But there is hope, according to The Boys of Baraka, an uplifting documentary.

Read Full Review >
75

San Francisco Chronicle Walter Addiego

Gripping.

Read Full Review >
75

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Here is a movie that makes you want to do something. Cry, or write a check, or howl with rage.

Read Full Review >
70

The New York Times Stephen Holden

The Boys of Baraka is so rich that you wish there were more of it.

Read Full Review >
70

The Hollywood Reporter Sura Wood

The docu is not visually innovative, but the content more than makes up for what it lacks in style.

Read Full Review >
50

Variety Joe Leydon

Feels achingly sad and frustratingly incomplete.

Read Full Review >
50

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White

The most interesting moments in the film are the videotapes sent back and forth between the parents and students, as they communicate the sadness of children separated from their distant families.

Read Full Review >
50

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Ewing and Grady practically squander the African material, and The Boys Of Baraka doesn't really come to life until the boys return to Baltimore for what turns out to be a permanent summer vacation, due to political unrest overseas.

Read Full Review >
50

LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

The kids absolutely win your heart, but there's something off-putting in the film's lazy juxtaposition of unexamined Negro dysfunction tropes (absent fathers, violent streets) against an idyllic Africa tended by white benevolence.

Read Full Review >
40

Village Voice Laura Sinagra

The Boys of Baraka's heart may be in the right place, but its portrait of poor Baltimore kids selected to attend boarding school in Kenya is rife with suspect perspectives.

Read Full Review >

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

K. Douglas gave it a7:
Like Hoop Dreams,both hopeful and heartbreaking.Unlike H.D.,not enough background material to fully satisfy the audience.

M & V gave it a10:
We both loved the Boys of Baraka. Especially the hedgehog!

Gregory M. gave it an8:
I saw this at the Chicago International Film Festival with a friend of mine who was a residential counselor at this school for 3 years. The film is well made and poignant, crafted with surprising skill from its freshmen directors. Unfortunately, there is a lot they left out for political purposes so a film that sets out to examine urban life, poverty, crime and race ends up neglecting the institutionalization of these same problems.

Popular on CBS sites: SEC Football | NFL | Video Game Cheats | iPhone | Video Game Reviews | Notebooks | Antivirus Software

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy (UPDATED) | Terms of Use