‘Half Nelson’
Ryan Fleck’s feature-length directorial debut, Half Nelson, is a subtle but gripping story of friendship and loneliness. Dan Dunne, played by Ryan Gosling, is a young and bright middle-school history teacher at an inner-city school. After a basketball game, a student, Drey (Shareeka Epps), finds him high in a stall in the girl’s locker room, and the event forms an unlikely bond between the two. Dunne struggles between being a mentor to the 13-year-old student and his own self-destruction. Also co-starring Anthony Mackie, the film was a catalyst in the careers of Fleck and collaborator Anna Boden, while Gosling’s powerful performance as the crack-addicted teacher earned him his first Oscar nomination.