Precious (2009) [* * * * *]

Precious is the daughter of an african-american woman on welfare in the US. All you see at the start of the movie is her violent nature to her classmates, her hugeness and her flights of fantasy about her math teacher and hwo she can barely read or write. Typical urban american.

She's expelled from her school for being pregnant with her second child and refuses is hostile about it to her principal. You're thinking, "Gosh, she's promiscuous too?? At 14?? Serves her right."

But slowly, you begin to see her in a new light when you see her home environment and what she's lived through. Precious has been regularly raped by her absentee father with her mother watching for years. Her two children are his. Her mother forces her to eat, abuses her at any excuse and wants her to quit studying to get on welfare too.

The 'each one teach one'community program for school dropouts begins her journey of writing about these struggles and how she creates a future where there was only suffering in silence before. I'd say it's a must-see for americans. For the rest of us, we need to understand the vicious cycles of poverty too, even in rich countries, and know how victims appear to be aggressors to mask their incomprehension.