HOMEROOM: FILM REVIEW
Peter Nicks’ Homeroom is a fresh time capsule of the 2019-2020 school year and serves as a reinvigorating look into the vibrancy of high school life, especially for kids who carry hope for the future despite having unfavorable circumstances that they can’t control. The documentary has something for every young person who might have found themselves moving towards a new chapter over the last two years — and the way the pandemic has remolded their stories.
Homeroom documents Oakland High School’s 2019-2020 school year through the eyes of seniors who are adamant about spending their final year of high school organizing to defund school police. Its protagonist is Denilson Garibo, a Latino senior nominated to represent the voices of students in the Oakland district, who is accompanied by his classmate Mica Smith-Dahl. Garibo is a genuine and like-able kid — one that happily reminds you of how passionate teenagers can be about causes they are genuinely care about and how naturally charismatic they can be while fighting for them. Garibo feels the weight of the district’s students on him, and while they don’t pressure him to actually change the minds of the white middle-class people who sit on the Oakland’s Board of Education, they certainly look up to him as their spokesperson.
Garibo and his community aren’t asking for much: only to remove the police from schools and to reframe the budget to allocate more resources to marginalized members of the community. Yet time and time again, adults sitting in positions of power don’t give their community members and students the respect and time they deserve. Though Garibo and his peers become increasingly frustrated, they take on the driven attitude of young people, who are able to see obstacles merely as inconvenient hurdles rather than complete barriers. In a scene that takes place after another board meeting where the opinions of students are drowned out by the status quo, Garibo and his fellow students cluster together outside for a group hug and remind themselves of why they’re fighting in the first place.
There are no sit-down interviews in Homeroom, as its storytelling technique relies purely on observation and social media; the camera pans to Instagram videos of police violence and vlogs of students documenting their final year of high school. Its candid-approach brings a sort of dynamism to a film that might otherwise be more subtle.
It’s strange to be at a point where the early stages of the pandemic are woven into narrative plot-lines — cementing the pandemic as an era in time, even as we are still living it. Although I was not a senior in high-school during March 2020, I was sent home early during my sophomore year of college — and like the students in the film, memories of the pandemic’s early months are largely defined by Black Lives Matter protests and the inevitable ignition of a fiery anger. Garibo and his peers are pushed to a position where they have to come to terms with the fact that it takes a national reckoning of structural racism in order for change in their local community to happen — and although such a reality carries heavy disappointment, in many ways, Garibo and his peers have already won. The school district might never hand over victory in the way they envisioned, but their ability to assemble and mobilize is a surefire sign, if any, that the future might not be engulfed in despair.
Homeroom’s energy is carried by the students of Oakland High School — who collectively paint a picture of some of America’s powerful youth at the cusp of adulthood. It’s a story of incredible conviction and solidarity — one that will invigorate any viewer who remembers what it feels like to fight for something bigger and to drown out the voices of those who say otherwise.