Filmmaker Denali Tiller shares cinematic credit with her three main characters in this intimate, vérité look at what it's like to grow up with one parent in prison. Maison Teixeira, Tre Janson, and Dasan Lopes are youngsters in Rhode Island, each with different hurdles to overcome. Maison, brilliant but hyperactive and Asperger's-afflicted, has a father who was imprisoned for being involved in a fight in which another man died. His no-nonsense grandmother watches over him at home, while his father does what he can during prison visitations, as Maison approaches schoolwork and the uncertain, emotional minefield of asking a girl out for the first time. Dasan is the youngest of the trio; his mother is actually being released from jail and must break the news to the boy that she was not just off at "school." Tre is the most stereotypically "at-risk" of the three (and yes, he aspires to be a rapper). While Tre's locked-up father agonizes over the boy, his careworn mother can hardly cope with his flare-ups of defiance, whether about home chores or the hard facts that Tre seems to be sliding into the street life with the bad kids of the neighborhood, though he seems to be more of a victim than a perpetrator–at least so far. Pain and thoughtful regret engulf the convict-parents as well as the children, and with a narrative arc spanning years, there's nothing clinical about the sympathetic approach or presentation; institutions and collections spotlighting social work should definitely add the title to their shelves as a learning tool, while general collections will find it a worthy real-life drama. Bullfrog Films makes available a 27-page viewer guide as well as a 17-page handbook for incarceration-oriented groups. Highly recommended. Aud: H, J, P. (C. Cassady)