This film is about a story of our children seeking new hope and alternatives beyond school. A community center in Busan runs a cultural program for teenage dropouts where they can gather together, make friends and form a rock band. While learning instruments, developing their own skills and honing their own talents, the teens nurture a hope and passion for the future, following which, ideally, their deeply hidden wounds will slowly heal. This heartfelt film is as raw as the teens’ clumsy musical skills. Though the film is unable to fully represent the subjects’ immature emotion, the lack of experience the immaturity of the film is something of a virtue here. <Beyond School> never keeps its distance as an observer; the camera actively intervenes and engages with the kids and directly reveals a fundamental care and concern for the teens, and it successfully conveys what lies deep in each teen’s heart. The film is one of hope, dreams, heartbreak, and a coming-of-age story of contemporary youth that have fallen through the cracks. (KIM Young-woo)