Ian Buruma

In this Sundance award-winning documentary, a group of teachers at a Mojave Desert high school take an unconventional approach towards improving the lives of their struggling students.

The Sky Ladder is a 1,650-foot ladder of fire climbing into the skies above artist Cai Guo-Qiang's hometown. Creating ambitious signature pieces on the largest imaginable scales, Cai's electrifying work often transcends physical permanence while burning its philosophies into the audience members' minds. Told through the artist's own words and those of family, friends and observers, the film tracks Cai's meteoric rise and examines why he engineers artworks that loom as far as the eye can see.

This is not a documentary about the making of 'Midnight Cowboy'. It is about a humane and groundbreaking masterpiece and the flawed but gifted people who made it. It is about a troubled era of cultural ferment, social and political change, about broken dreams and strivers, then and now. It is about an era that made a movie and a movie that made an era.