Radical  5 stars

There are so many good imaginative movies at Sundance which makes it hard to identify the very best.  But I believe we have one in Radical.  It is a true story about a Mexican teacher starting a new job at one of the poorest and badly performing elementary schools in Mexico. The school is in a border town that is full of violence and corruption where the students come from extreme poverty.   Mexican funny man Eugenio Derbez stars as Sergio Juarez who is taking over the sixth grade class for the new school year.  Derbez is known for the comedy How to Be a Latin Lover and for his role in CODA. His role here is much more of a dramatic one, but he is great in it.  Sergio has a very different approach to teaching where he really gets the students enthused about learning,  but has to deal with disapproval from the Director and from parents who don’t like their children getting their hopes up too high.  The idea of a hero teacher bringing out the potential of underprivileged children has been done a few times but Radical really does an outstanding job at it. Derbez and two of the child actors were present for the Q&A. Many of the scenes shown in the movie happened in real life including the corruption that deprives the school of computers.  At the Q&A it was revealed that after ten years the school still does not have computers and it would be pointless to get them because they would only be stolen for the parts.  The two girls answered that they hope to continue with acting careers. I did not have this one on my initial list but looked for it once I heard some of the word of mouth,  (plus it has Eugenio Derbez, one of the funniest actors I have seen.)