2007 drama film by Richard LaGravenese
Freedom Writers is a 2007 American biographical drama film written and directed by Richard LaGravenese and starring Hilary Swank, Scott Glenn, Imelda Staunton, Patrick Dempsey and Mario.
It is based on the 1999 book The Freedom Writers Diary by teacher Erin Gruwell and students who compiled the book out of real diary entries about their lives that they wrote in their English class at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School in Long Beach, California. The movie is also based on the DC program called City at Peace. The title of the movie and book is a play on the term "Freedom Riders," referring to the multiracial civil rights activists who tested the U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering the desegregation of interstate buses in 1961.
The idea for the film came from journalist Tracey Durning, who made a documentary about Erin Gruwell for the ABC News program Primetime Live. Durning served as co-executive producer of the film. The film was dedicated to the memory of actor Armand Jones, who was killed after filming Freedom Writers. He was fatally shot at age 18 in Anaheim, California, after a confrontation with a man who robbed Jones of a necklace in a Denny's restaurant.
Freedom Writers premiered at the Westwood Village Theatre on January 4, 2007, and was theatrically released the following day in the United States by Paramount Pictures. It received positive reviews from critics and was a modest box-office success, grossing $43.6 million worldwide on a budget of $21 million.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.