Hoop Dreams (1994)

Directed by

Steve James

Genre

documentary film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 50m

Rated

PG-13

Rating

7.6 of 10 from 335 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A documentary that follows two African American high school students from Chicago as they chase their dreams of becoming professional basketball players over several years. It shows their struggles on and off the court including family life, injuries, and the pressures of recruitment.

inspiringintimateemotionalpatientobservationalhopefulgroundeddetermined

What happens

Hoop Dreams is a 1994 American documentary film directed by Steve James, and produced by Frederick Marx, James, and Peter Gilbert, with Kartemquin Films. It follows the story of two African-American high school students, William Gates and Arthur Agee, in Chicago and their dream of becoming professional basketball players. Hoop Dreams was originally intended to be a 30-minute short film produced for PBS; the filming of the special led to five years of filming and 250 hours of footage. Hoop Dreams premiered at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. It won numerous other awards in the 1994 season, although it was not nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, which led to a massive public outcry. Despite its length (171 minutes) and unlikely commercial genre, it received high critical and popular acclaim, and grossed over $11 million worldwide. Hoop Dreams was ranked #1 on the Current TV special 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die. In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The International Documentary Association's members ranked Hoop Dreams as the best documentary of all time in 2007. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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