Freedom Writers

Freedom Writers (2007) is an American drama directed by Richard LaGravenese — watch it online on iFILM. Hilary Swank plays Erin Gruwell, a first-year teacher who walks into a Long Beach, California classroom in 1994 and finds students who belong to rival gangs and have never finished a single book.

Gruwell hands them blank journals and asks them to write — no grades, no rules. The entries that come back describe drive-by shootings, family deportations, friends killed before sixteen. To buy the books the school board refuses to provide, she works two side jobs while her marriage to Scott (Patrick Dempsey) quietly falls apart. The department head, played by Imelda Staunton, is convinced the class is beyond saving. Gruwell is not.

The actual journals kept by her students were published in 1999 as The Freedom Writers Diary and became required reading across the country. The film earns its emotion through specifics: each kid in the room carries a story that has nothing to do with a classroom exercise. Stream Freedom Writers (2007) online on iFILM.