Step, a new documentary about a high school step team in Baltimore, looks very good. It premiered at Sundance earlier this year to rave reviews, and Fox Searchlight was so impressed that they bought it for a cool $4 million.
Per Deadline, the film “focuses on three senior girls as they go through the college application process” at The Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, a school founded “with a mandate to send every student to college.” As part of its first graduating class, the young women are feeling the various pressures of applying to schools, and their step team (the Lethal Ladies) provides a welcome escape. (And, as the trailer suggests, perhaps a whole lot more.)
“They’re coming home to no lights. Not having food in the refrigerator—not having a refrigerator at all,” says one woman at the beginning of the trailer. “But when they come to step practice, all of those things are erased out of their minds, so they can make it through life.”
Step will be released August 4.