Some films use the 1990s as a quaint backdrop for throwback soundtracks and fashion. Raise Your Hand remembers the decade differently. It treats the past not as a costume box but as a fresh crime scene, examining a period before the language for certain traumas became commonplace.
Set in a bleak Midwestern high school, the film follows best friends Gia (Jearnest Corchado) and Lila (Hanani Taylor) as they navigate an adolescence defined by scarcity and peril.
This is not a story of coming of age so much as a document of survival, presented with a raw, unvarnished honesty that feels less like a narrative feature and more like a recovered artifact. The subject is resilience, but the film never lets you forget how much it costs.
The Journal as Secular Confessional
The world of Jefferson High is a closed system of systemic neglect, a perfect microcosm of societal determinism. Poverty, police antagonism, and parental absence are not background texture; they are active forces that circumscribe the characters’ lives, raising the philosophical question of what free will can possibly mean in such a constrained environment.
The school itself exists as a central paradox. It is a place of mandated attendance but purely optional engagement, a holding pen where academic learning seems an absurd luxury next to the immediate project of surviving the day. It’s a battlefield of social hierarchies where the most important lessons have nothing to do with the curriculum.
Into this void steps Gia’s journal. This simple notebook becomes the film’s most potent symbol, a secular confessional where the ambient chaos of her life can be wrestled into narrative order. It is her private attempt to create a historical record for a life society would happily ignore, an act of self-creation through documentation.
(In an era before the digital soapbox, this analog testimony feels almost sacred). She chronicles her own anxieties, but more urgently, she documents the frightening, self-destructive trajectory of her friend Lila. When the film confronts the reality of sexual assault, it does so by refusing to aestheticize the violence.
Its power lies in its focus on the quiet, ugly aftermath—the way trauma poisons every subsequent interaction. The event is a puncture, and the film watches as life slowly drains out around it. It is through the journal that a teacher, Ms. Ramsey, finds a window into this reality. She is no magical savior, but a crucial witness who recognizes the raw data of suffering and sees its potential for transformation into the coherent protest of art.
The Weight of Sincere Faces
The film rests its considerable weight on the shoulders of its two young leads, and their performances feel less like acting and more like bearing witness. This is sincerity not as a sentiment, but as a technique—a performance style stripped of vanity, willing to live inside a character’s ugliest contradictions.
Jearnest Corchado gives Gia a quiet, observant intensity that grounds the entire picture, conveying a lifetime of accumulated weariness in her posture alone. Her performance is a masterclass in interiority; you see her thinking, processing, and bracing for the next blow.
As Lila, Hanani Taylor provides the tragic, kinetic counterpoint. She is all externalized pain, a girl whose brash confidence and provocative style are a desperate shield against a profound vulnerability. Taylor makes us understand that Lila’s reckless choices are not a moral failing but a symptom of a spirit with no healthy outlet.
The friendship they portray is not the sanitized version common in film; it is a complex, almost feral bond, laced with jealousy and resentment but forged with an unbreakable loyalty. It’s a frighteningly accurate depiction of intense adolescent friendship. (It helps immensely that these are fresh faces; a known star would shatter the delicate illusion).
Even the supporting adults, like Jess Nurse’s concerned teacher, are portrayed not as one-dimensional heroes but as tired people making a conscious, difficult effort to care, which is somehow more moving. They represent flickering embers of hope in a system designed to extinguish them.
Debut with a Sharpened Edge
Jessica Rae’s work here is that of a filmmaker with something urgent to say. As a debut, Raise Your Hand is startlingly self-assured in its intimate, documentary-like style. Rae’s camera stays claustrophobically close to its subjects, creating a sense of entrapment that mirrors their lives. This sincerity is the film’s engine.
And yet, this same quality leads the film toward familiar territory. One must confront the fact that the movie occasionally utilizes the archetypes of the “troubled teen” genre: the inspirational teacher, the predatory boys, the predictable cycles of bad decisions.
Does this reliance on cliché undercut the film’s hard-won authenticity? Perhaps. It risks reducing complex social issues to a known formula. Then again, perhaps Rae’s deeply personal approach reclaims these tropes, stripping them of their artifice to expose the grim human truths from which they originated. The film’s greatest strength and its most visible weakness are one and the same.
It acts as a bridge from the 90s to today, reminding us that current crises are part of a long continuum. The film’s title becomes its final instruction: it offers no easy resolution, but instead validates the difficult, defiant, and necessary act of speaking up.
“Raise Your Hand” is a 1990s coming-of-age drama about high schoolers in the Midwest, focusing on Gia and Lila, best friends navigating difficult home lives and societal injustices. It’s the directorial debut of Jessica Rae and is based on her personal experiences as a multiracial woman of color in Minneapolis.
Full Credits
Director: Jessica Rae
Writers: Jessica Rae
Producers: Jessica Rae, Evan Allen-Gessesse, Margarita Reyes, Adam Dick, Chanda Dancy, Ambika Leigh, Eileen Kennedy
Cast: Jearnest Corchado, Hanani Taylor, Jess Nurse, Joel Steingold, Gracie Marie Bradley, Janet Craig, Gregory Scott Cummins, Isabella Day, Donat, Fenix Lazzaroni
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Judy Phu
Editors: Ambika Leigh
Composer: Chanda Dancy
The Review
Raise Your Hand
Raise Your Hand is a raw, necessary film that succeeds because of its profound sincerity. Anchored by two outstanding lead performances and the confident, personal direction of Jessica Rae, it tells an old story with the honesty it has long been denied. While it sometimes leans on familiar genre elements, its unflinching look at adolescent survival and the power of finding one's voice makes it a potent and memorable debut. It’s a difficult watch that earns its emotional weight.
PROS
- Exceptionally strong and authentic lead performances from Jearnest Corchado and Hanani Taylor.
- A raw, intimate directorial style that creates a powerful sense of realism.
- An honest and sensitive handling of difficult subjects like trauma and poverty.
- Effectively uses its 1990s setting to explore timeless issues without resorting to simple nostalgia.
CONS
- Occasionally relies on familiar character archetypes and plot points from the "troubled teen" genre.
- The narrative can feel formulaic in certain moments, following a predictable path.
- Some of the supporting characters and situations can feel underdeveloped.
