Review by John Delia
Now here’s a documentary that should erase a bad day, provide inspiration or just a need for an uplift. It’s called Own the Room and it takes you into the lives of 5 highly innovated students as they compete for a world title. Nicely directed, the film has some very interesting circumstances from which they come, and how diligent they needed to be in the highly completive competition. It’s like TV’s “Shark Tank†for the world, but only for students.
The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards competition involves making, marketing, and the creativity of a product or service that would be applicable to most any country in the world. Vying for top honors and a prize of $100,000 are students from all over the world that have qualified in each of their countries.
Although this film follows students Venezuelan born Daniela Blanco a student at NYUniversity representing USA, Santosh Pandey a student from Bhaktapur, Nepal, Jason Hadzikostas designee from Greece, Alondra Toledo entry from Puerto Rico, and Henry Onyango selected in Nairobi, Kenya, we get to see large number of rivals involved.
Directors Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster show the pressure the students take on as they pitch their products to businessmen in each of their countries. It then goes into each of their pasts growing up in some difficult surroundings, dealing with problems, developing their product and even showing how the product or service actually works in the their test groups. I like the way we get a view of the countries from the point of view of each student, some coming from very dangerous cities others looking to better themselves or just happy to provide something that may help their people.
The film has not been rated by the MPAA, but has no negative content that would possibly be counterproductive to anyone mature enough to understand completive competitions. The film has been made through National Geographic and is available on Disney + streaming. I rate the film a 4 out of 5 Stars.
Additional Film Information:
Participants: Daniela Blanco, Santosh Pandey, Jason Hadzikostas, Alondra Toledo, and Henry Onyango
Directed by: Cristina and Darren Foster
Genre: Documentary
MPAA Rating: Not Rated, no offensive material for the mature.
Running Time: 1 hr.30 min.
Opening Date: March 12, 2021
Distributed by: National Geographic
Released in: Disney +