''Step'' (sometimes stylized ''STEP'') is a 2017 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

directed by

Amanda Lipitz Amanda Lipitz is an American director and producer of films and Broadway shows, including the documentary ''STEP''. She's also a former voice actress, best known for voicing Zoey in the English localization of the Japanese anime series Mew Mew ...

, focusing on a girls'

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

high school dance team. It won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Inspirational Filmmaking at the

2017 Sundance Film Festival The 2017 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 19 to January 29, 2017. The first lineup of competition films was announced November 30, 2016. Awards The following awards were presented: * Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic – ''I Don't Feel at ...

and the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2017 AFI Docs Festival. It was released in theaters on August 4, 2017.

Story

''Step'' is the true-life story of a girls’ high-school step team set against the background of the heart of

. These young women learn to laugh, love and thrive – on and off the stage – even when the world seems to work against them. Empowered by their teachers, teammates, counselors, coaches and families, they chase their ultimate dreams: to win a step championship and to be accepted into college. This all female school is reshaping the futures of its students’ lives by making it their goal to have every member of their senior class accepted to and graduate from college, many of whom will be the first in their family to do so.

Cast

*Blessin Giraldo *Cori Grainger *Tayla Solomon *Gari McIntyre *Paula Dofat

Release

The film premiered at the

and was released in the United States on August 4, 2017. The film made $145,000 from 29 theaters in its opening weekend, and then $185,000 from 278 theaters in its second.

Critical response

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has an approval rating of 95% based on 79 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "''Step'' tells an irresistibly crowd-pleasing story in a thoroughly absorbing way -- and while smartly incorporating a variety of timely themes." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by

CinemaScore CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data. Background Ed Mintz founded Ci ...

gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Ann Hornaday Ann Hornaday is an American film critic. She has been film critic at ''The Washington Post'' since 2002 and is the author of ''Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies'' (2017). In 2008, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Ear ...

of ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' remarks that the film "...fires on every cylinder, investing viewers in personal stories that couldn’t have higher stakes and inviting them on a journey that pays off in ways expected and utterly surprising."

References

External links

* * * * * {{Navboxes , title = Awards for ''Step'' , list1 = {{Black Reel Award for Outstanding Documentary {{NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary American documentary films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films