TIFF ‘10 | Oscar Winner Guggenheim Fights Malaise in “Superman”
Academy Award-winning doc filmmaker Davis Guggenheim at moments became emotional, choking up as he spoke about one of the girls, Daisy, he profiles in his latest film, “Waiting for Superman,” which exposes the breakdown in American education.
“I’ve watched this movie 40 times and I watch Daisy in East Los Angeles and she’s motivated, smart and her father works as a truck driver, while her mother cleans hospital rooms. She wants to be a doctor and her parents have hope. They believe that if they do their part that America will do its part.”
At the core of “Superman” is whether America has the will and courage to face up to its spiraling public education system. While it has been generally accepted that education in America has faced a frightening decline, with statistics to back up that fear, Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) hopes that the film will motivate people to believe that a crisis that may appear intractable can be reformed and improved despite the perception that it is a system stymied by entrenched paralysis.