''Try Harder!'' is a 2021 American documentary film, directed and produced by

Debbie Lum Deborah Lum is an American documentary filmmaker based in San Francisco. Her projects frequently explore subject matters within the Asian and Asian American community. She has had a long working relationship with ITVS. Career Lum worked for ...

. It follows students at Lowell High School as they apply and hope for admission to the college of their dreams. It had its world premiere at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

on January 30, 2021. It was released on December 3, 2021, by

Greenwich Entertainment Greenwich Entertainment, founded in 2017, is an independent film distribution company specializing in distinctive, theatrical-quality narrative and documentary features. The company released Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi’s Academy Award-W ...

Synopsis

Students at Lowell High School apply and hope for admission to the college of their dreams.

Release

The film had its world premiere at the

on January 30, 2021. It also screened at the

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is an annual international event dedicated to the theatrical exhibition of non-fiction cinema. The festival is a program of the Center for Documentary Studies, a non-profit, 501(c)(3) at Duke University. ...

on June 2, 2021. It also screened at

AFI Docs The AFI Docs (formerly Silverdocs) documentary film festival is an American international film festival created by the American Film Institute and the Discovery Channel. It is held every year in Silver Spring, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Started ...

in June 2021. In August 2021,

acquired distribution rights to the film. It was released on December 3, 2021. The film also aired on ''

Independent Lens ''Independent Lens'' is a weekly television series airing on PBS featuring documentary films made by independent filmmakers. Past seasons of ''Independent Lens'' were hosted by Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Susan Sarandon, Edie Falco, Terrence Ho ...

'' on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

on May 2, 2022.

Reception

Box office

In its opening weekend, the film earned $27,815 from 5 theaters.

Critical response

''Try Harder'' received positive reviews from film critics. On

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 ...

it holds a 97% approval rating based on 33 reviews, with an average rating of 7.50/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Straightforward and disarmingly, charmingly sincere, Try Harder! follows college-bound students through their final year of high school".

References

External links

* * {{IMDb title, 13648160 2021 films 2021 documentary films American documentary films Documentary films about high school Documentary films about high school in the United States PBS original programming 2020s English-language films 2020s American films