The moment nine-year-old Emmanuel got his first video camera in 1999, he began to shoot a chronicle of the Sanford family, warts and all. Adolescence wasn’t easy for him and his siblings, growing up in a cramped home without a father, and raised by a loving mother who struggled unsuccessfully against her inner demons. Although located just seventeen blocks from the US Capitol, the proximity could not protect them from the poverty and violence of their neighborhood, nor from the unpredictability of the world. Ten years later, filmmaker and journalist Davy Rothbart uses raw documentary material, disarming in its authenticity, to create a moving drama about the power of family bonds and the brutality of everyday life in America.