Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.
Filmed over more than 25 years, The Pushouts follows Victor Rios’ inspiring trajectory from high school dropout, three-time felon and Oakland gang member to award-winning professor, author and expert on the school-to-prison pipeline. Filmmakers Katie Galloway and Dawn Valadez weave in the stories from YO!Watts, a youth center serving 16-24 year-olds who are out of school and out of work. The Psuhouts premieres September 20 on PBS/Voces.
Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates, a series from Davis Guggenheim, premieres September 20 on Netflix. The three-part series explores the mind and motivations of celebrated tech visionary, business leader, and philanthropist Bill Gates.
Currently streaming on New York Times Op-Docs, Esther Niemeier’s Losing My Son to Syria, retraces the path of a young Berlin resident who leaves his city to join a Syrian extremist group. Through interviews with the man’s mother and comrade, as well as through cellphone videos and emails, Niemeier aims to clarify what might compel someone to leave his family and answer the call of fundamentalism.
Coming September 17 to Kanopy is Tony Silver’s Style Wars, the 1983 classic that captures the early days of New York City hip-hop culture, from the subway to the playgrounds to the streets to the clubs.