Escola 3 - Uma Nova Viagem

An excellent drama about the plight of everyday workers in a Japan hard-hit by the recession, The New Voyage (Gakko III, 1998) is the third of director Yoji Yamada's four "Gakko" ("School") films to date. Each movie honestly but optimistically dramatizes the struggles of students and teachers trying to better themselves in unconventional educational programs. In A Class to Remember (Gakko, 1993) semi-literate, working-class adults, troubled youths, and discriminated foreigners worked with devoted teacher Toshiyuki Nishida to earn their junior high school diploma, while The Learning Circle (Gakko II, 1996) was set in a school for mentally-retarded teenagers. The New Voyage focuses in on two displaced workers studying at a free-of-charge vocational school.