This silently observational film joins a group of children being taken on a bus to visit their mothers in prison; it is a charity- organized event. We see them travel, see their mums, and then head home again. There aren't any talking heads really, or constant text on screen telling us things; it is just children who are separated from their mothers, getting to see them for part of a day.
As such it is impacting, and the stat at the end saying 1 in 10 children have their mother in jail in California is intense. As a liberal, I do lean towards sympathy but I liked that the film doesn't really allow your political views to come into it. For example I'd guess some of the mothers we see probably are there due to hugely unfair sentencing systems mixed with bad situations they can't escape – but I'm equally sure that some of them would be hard to defend even for a bleeding heart like myself. The good thing is that we don't know any detail at all – not even enough to be worried about it. Instead the film focuses on the children – none of whom have done anything to justify their situation. By doing this I think it is much more impacting because it makes it about children, and it is hard not to reach the conclusion that something is not working in this situation, even if we can all argue the politics of the details and specifics.
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