Freedom Writers 2007 (hollywood)

Freedom Writers is inspired by a true story and the diaries of real Long Beach, California teenagers after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, during the worst outbreak of interracial gang warfare. Set in and around Wilson Classical High School in Long Beach, California during the mid 1990s, two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank stars as English teacher Erin Gruwell.

After a few days of class, Gruwell and her students get into a debate about racism during which she compares a caricature of a black student with big lips, drawn by another student, to the Nazis' caricatures of Jews with big noses. She then takes her students on a field trip to the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance to teach them about the Holocaust. An exterior view of the museum is shown, and there are scenes inside the museum, showing simulated entrances to gas chambers in Nazi death camps.

One of the books the students read is The Diary of Anne Frank, and money is raised to have Miep Gies come over to talk about the Holocaust. The roles of four Holocaust survivors, some of whom survived Auschwitz, who meet with students in a dinner hosted by Gruwell, are played by the actual Holocaust survivors themselves.

Since the school is not very capable and unwilling to pay for books and excursions, Gruwell pays a lot of the expenses herself, financed by two extra, part-time, jobs. Because of the little time she spends with her husband, he eventually divorces her.

Over the course of the movie, Gruwell finds more ways to teach her students about racism and respect. As Gruwell begins to listen to them in a way no adult has ever done, she begins to understand that these kids believe that surviving is enough — that they are not delinquents but teenagers fighting "a war of the streets" that began long before they were born. For the first time, the teens experience hope that they can show the world that their lives matter and that they have something to say.

Ms. G, as her students come to call Gruwell, hands out journals to her students so they can write about the past, present, future, good days and bad ones. Happily, she watches each student come to her desk and take one. Later on she sits down to read and becomes amazed at their stories and hardships. These students become freedom writers. Ms. G makes her students type up their stories into a book they title, "The Freedom Writers Diary," and according to the end credits, this book was published in 1999.

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