New York LOVES Film 2008 Award Winner

Director Daniela Zanzotto has a history of using film to document intimate and personal struggles of every day people, so it's no surprise she is at the helm of of the award winning Tribeca film "Zoned In" about a boy who, at 16 and with two brothers already headed for the penal system, is about to embark on a long journey into an Ivy League university.

From the early film sequences, it's clear Daniel is one of the brightest 16 year olds anyone is ever going to meet, and his natural eloquence on camera makes it even more clear why he was chosen among half a dozen students for a completed documentary, if such a thing can truly exist.

Zanzotto keeps a focussed lens on Daniel, letting him tell his own story in a sequence of scenes where he grows from fresh and confident teen to a struggling stranger in a strange land, surrounded by shiny BMWs. He sees through these token status objects, which have been bestowed by old wealth family money only to be squandered by the students he must compete against in the university setting. He only shakes his head at what is given freely instead of earned.

His comments on the overabundance he sees around him ring true from lonely honesty and a piercing perspective all his own concerning the fallacy of the Ivy League American university as a genuine proving ground for the able. He hasn't the money to even attend the social gatherings that his posh classmates expect as an entry point to their social circles outside the classroom.

During class time he finds his real-life experience shunned and feared by a political and social agenda that is at odds with any sympathy toward his background. He reacts angrily by refusing to vote and receding into an inner sanctuary of family photographs and fear at letting down his young son. He is given every coercion to leave, yet he resolves to stay, no matter the cost to his confidence and the added viciousness of marginalization while being surrounded by such overabundant privilege.

Instead of giving in Daniel stays on campus and navigates the dual challenges of acclimating to his new life surrounded by wealth and its unsaid expectation of uniformity, while trying to maintain a connection to his roots, which he comes to realize have failed to prepare him as a scholar for the rigors of competitive university studies.

Like many students beginning college on their own merits, he finds the systems difficult to navigate and the assistance offered less than cursory, a growing problem in the American university system as a whole, but magnified here for a young man who could use the mentorship and real one-on-one camaraderie he found initially through a High School mentor. Where the struggle of every displaced student ends and the additional burden of being poor in a wealthy school system begins is difficult to place, but this ads all the more universality to Daniel's struggle to comprehend the planet on which he has landed, and the strange people with whom he must now interact for his grades and social acceptance.

His on-camera conversations with his older brother show two sophisticated and eloquent young men caught in a circumstance where one has an out with a scholarship to a prestigious university, while the other can see no solution except for activities that inevitably place him back in prison. The pride from his family magnifies Daniel's fears about being the prodigal son, and deepen his resolve to see himself through to become an educated dad to his own bright young son.

Daniel's story becomes much more than a tale of a poor child in a rich school, but is a bright and warm insider view of the modern son's search for community identity, while learning to question what is genuinely a part of one's culture versus what is supplanted and ultimately false. Coming from a community in Brooklyn which is saturated with re-enforcing, self-damaging behaviors that masquerade as culture and identity, Daniel struggles against and must eventually redefine how he views what is genuine community culture from what is superficial wealth and dangerously-sought pomp and status. He sees how hollow the same materialism rings when it is worn by his wealthy schoolmates as expected uniform, given no significance aside from identifying the haves from the have nots, giving him a different spin on life.

Nerves were still raw by the end of the film from watching an angry and disillusioned Daniel on the day of his graduation, finally breaking down to cry after so many difficult years struggling in virtual isolation amidst the privileged students who were nestled too deeply in their cocoons and echo chambers to really offer him the chance to interact within the system.

During the Q and A afterward, a heckler in the crowd grilled director Zanzotto, catching her off guard with his leading questions that put her on the stand as the representational specter to atone for the emotional punishment Daniel received at the hands of a predominantly white university institution. The follow-up question from the same man was even more telling. "Were you able to empathize?" became a well-annunciated suggestion that, as a white British woman, Zanzotto would be as incapable of empathizing with Daniel's plight as every white person who had not reached out to him during the documentary. The audience grew quiet, the moderator round-eyed, and it wasn't until a woman at the front of the auditorium rephrased the question in her own milder form that the moderator cut the question entirely, recognizing it as a repackaging of the first. Sadly, the second question was beautiful, but the initial heckler had not left room for any continued discussion on the topic.

Such are the adventures of a Tribeca talks moderator, but as a community discussion of downtown New Yorkers that otherwise would never have occurred, the film did much to incite a realization not just of the thick glass ceiling placed on the poor of this country, but also became a sounding board for the deep anger that still clogs the unity process, one that needs to be addressed in order to close the widening gap between rich and poor.

For his part, Daniel works hard to be true to himself, claiming to the end that he will never hate where he comes from, and maintaining his composure even in times of extreme isolation from his schoolmates. His early life experiences had already matured him in many ways beyond the level of mindless partying that his youthful peers exercised. Yet his spirit is not broken by the experience of swimming in their pond, and he grows to become a successful mentor to his own community, becoming a school teacher in inner-city Brooklyn where he himself began. Much like the sharp-witted Daniel of his initial taping at 16, the new Daniel that emerges by the end of the film is warm and confident, showing a sensitivity and insight to his students as a stand-in father figure to many that perhaps no other teacher could provide, all while taking care of his newborn daughter and growing young son at home.

Daniel is still searching to connect his family and his heritage by the end of the film, but unlike the timid boy in college, now he leads the attempt, knowing exactly what his students will face, pushing them through to excel and complete the new cycle of college graduates. If there's a better film to win the New York LOVES Film award, I challenge anyone to produce it.