Documentary grapples with teens’ struggles amid economic inequality

Four athletes at a failing Alabama high school try to pin their problems to the mat and win a state championship in “Wrestle,” showing Friday at the Gateway Film Center.

The movie, part of Documentary Week at the Gateway, centers on four wrestlers:

• Jailen Young, who lives with his grandparents and hasn’t seen his mother since he was 2;

• Jamario Rowe, a fatherto-be who is stoic on the outside but seething on the inside;

• Jaquan Rhodes, who has problems with motivation and likes to smoke marijuana;

• Teague Berres, who freely admits that he doesn’t take his medication prescribed for emotional problems.

The film also focuses on coach Chris Scribner, who has walked in his athletes’ shoes: a former wrestler, he had been expelled from his high school for drinking and drug use. At the time of filming, Scribner had been sober for 10 years.

Director Suzannah Herbert, 31, of New York City and a native of Memphis, Tennessee, learned about the wrestling

team at J.O. Johnson High School in the downtrodden north side of Huntsville, Alabama. The high school, which had been designated as failing for many years, was scheduled to close after the 2015-16 school year.

“Through my Southern connections, I had heard about the team,” Herbert said, “and they had just started wrestling two years before, yet they were beating opponents who had been wrestling their whole lives and beating well-funded teams.”

Herbert and her cinematographer, Sinisa Kukic, rented a house in Huntsville and lived there for six months as they made the movie during the school’s final year.

Originally, Herbert and co-director Lauren Belfer wanted to make a documentary about the seniors on the team who were ending their scholastic careers as their high school closed.

That changed once they met Young, Rowe, Rhodes and Berres.

“From a filmmaking perspective,” said Belfer, 34, also of New York City, “the differences in their experiences highlight bigger issues about growing up.”

After persuading balky school administrators to participate, getting the coach and athletes to join was simpler.

“We would spend time with them at home, with their families,” Herbert said. “I think we were able to gain their trust so that when really hard things happened, it was OK for us to be there and be documenting them.”

And difficult things did happen. Two team members had brushes with police; emotions sometimes flared.

Meanwhile, Scribner was driving the team to win a state title and to think about the effect that wrestling could have on their lives; a scholarship, a college diploma and a career were within reach.

“I think Chris has a really amazing transformative effect on their lives,” Belfer said. “He really pushed them to commit to something.

“I think they’re all very grateful for Chris.”

Meanwhile, the students made the filmmakers examine their own lives.

“Intellectually, I know I have so much privilege,” Herbert said, “but being there and living down there and just the process of making the movie and watching the footage, emotionally I felt our privilege more. (I wanted to) help in any way we could through art.”

One way to help was to break through the teens’ macho stoicism and allow them to show their emotions.

“It breaks my heart,” Belfer said. “Our job as documentary filmmakers is to be there to listen. We gave them space to express themselves.”

One effect the filmmakers hope the film has is on Huntsville itself, a community rich in aerospace and technology companies on the city’s south side.

“The north side was where Johnson is located, and it’s the forgotten side,” Herbert said. “We hope that all of Huntsville sees ‘Wrestle’ and tries to recalibrate their thinking about north Huntsville and starts programs and shifts more resources there.”

As for the young men profiled in the movie, the four athletes’ quests for state titles have very different endings. Beyond high

school, the four have continued on different paths. Two are no longer in Huntsville; two are still there. Scribner left a career in education and enrolled at the Vanderbilt University law school in Nashville, Tennessee.

But the

socioeconomic problems in Huntsville — and many cities like it in America — remain.

“We hope people will realize and emotionally understand the vast inequalities that still exist with millions of people in hundreds of communities in America,” Herbert said. “We hope that the film poses questions about that.”