Our Song

In late summer, three Brooklyn girls who perform with a Crown Heights marching band are buffeted by the closing of their school and make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives. Lanisha (Kerry Washington) breaks up with her boyfriend (he wants to “slow things down”) and looks to her separated parents for emotional support. Maria (Melissa Martinez) becomes pregnant. Jocelyn (Anna Simpson), who lives with her party-girl mother, slowly distances herself from the others and makes new best friends. Writer-director Jim McKay (Girls Town) captures the trio’s growing pains and the gnawing complexities of inner-city life with compelling naturalism and intimacy. It’s a period of confusion, sadness, blossoming and broken dreams and youthful vigor in which life is hard but survivable, and “nothing and everything” happens. The fabulous, soulful Jackie Robinson Center Steppers appear as themselves.