Raising Bertie

The film alternates between triumph and tragedy, but there’s never a moment that doesn’t feel intimate and authentic in its 96-minute running time.

Raising Bertie charts nothing less than what it’s like to try to grow up free in the prison capital of the world.

The experiences and challenges of the rural poor might make it into the national conversation as an abstraction, but rarely with the specificity of this intimate portrait of a black community.

It’s a portrait of communities and families striving to do right by their kids, but where schools and lack of job programs fail to meet communities’ most desperate needs.

There are times when Raising Bertie can seem a bit too unfocused, but it’s a project that always feels worthwhile for the opportunity it provides to expand an often-narrow view of the country.

Raising Bertie is a moving chronicle, and a potent treatise on institutional failings that knows to demonstrate said problems instead of merely preaching them.

The documentary mistakes its access to quotidian behaviors as evidence of the need for comprehensive educational and financial reform.