Amlan Ganguly is a visionary. This lawyer-turned-community activist is not only changing a neighborhood, but also changing the way its youngest residents envision their lives. In this character-driven and highly cinematic documentary, acclaimed filmmakers Nicole Newnham  (The Rape of Europa, Sentenced Home) and Maren Grainger-Monsen (Worlds Apart, The Vanishing Line) reveal Ganguly's critical work in a Calcutta slum neighborhood.

Filmed over the course of three and a half years, The Revolutionary Optimists follows Amlan and three of the children he works with through adolescence as they challenge the idea that marginalization is written into their destiny. Using theater, dance and data, the children have cut disease rates and turned garbage heaps into playing fields. Now, they have set their sights on goals that push at the limits of optimism: Trying to bring clean water to a community that has long been denied it, and enabling the migrant children working in the brick fields on Calcutta's outskirts to receive an education.