Step

This intimate and emotionally affecting documentary from director Amanda Lipitz follows several senior girls on the step dance team at Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women. A relatively new school with a student body largely composed of African-American girls from low-income families, the BLSYW began with a single sixth grade class, and the film covers the senior year of those founding students. The strength of these girls is inspiring (although many family backstories are left tastefully vague), but the highs and lows they experience on the way to the film’s inevitable “big game” finish are haunted by the ghost of Freddie Gray, the African-American man who was killed in 2015 while in Baltimore Police custody. His specter lends an extra level of gravitas to the routines (the most powerful of several electrifying step dance scenes is a tribute to Black Lives Matter) and an additional significance to the report cards. D.B.