Gracie

Set in 1978, <i>Gracie</i> is an inspirational film about a teenage girl who overcomes the loss of her brother and fights the odds to achieve her dream of playing competitive soccer at a time when girls' soccer did not exist. Based on true events from the lives of the Shue family (producer and co-star Andrew Shue, Academy Award-nominated actress Elisabeth Shue), the film is directed by Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim (<i>An Inconvenient Truth</i>), who happens to be part of the family as well, being married to Elisabeth Shue.<br /><br />Living in South Orange New Jersey, 15-year-old Gracie Bowen (Carly Schroeder) is the only girl in a family of three brothers. Their family life revolves almost entirely around soccer: her father (Dermot Mulroney) and brothers are obsessed with the sport, practicing in the backyard's makeshift field every day from morning 'til night. Tragedy unexpectedly strikes when Gracie's older brother Johnny (Jesse Lee Soffer), star of the high school college soccer team and Gracie's only protector, is killed in a car accident.<br /><br />Struggling with grief over her family's loss, Gracie decides to fill the void left on her brother's team by petitioning the school board to allow her to play on the boy's high school varsity soccer team in his place. Her father, a former soccer star himself, tries to prove to Gracie that she is not tough enough or talented enough to play with boys. Her mother, Lindsey Bowen already an outsider in the sports-obsessed family, is no help either. Undeterred, Gracie finds reserves of strength she never knew existed, and persists in changing everyone's beliefs in what she is capable of, including her own. Gracie not only forces her father to wake up from his grief and see her as the beautiful and strong person that she has always been but she also brings her family together in the face of their tragedy.