"The Road Up" follows four participants in Cara — a Chicago job-training program — as they seek to make the long journey from rock bottom to stable employment. Throughout, they are guided, goaded, and challenged by their impassioned mentor, Mr. Jesse, whose own complicated past drives him to help others find hope in the face of poverty, addiction, homelessness, and trauma.
Taken together, their stories create a powerful mosaic of the struggles millions of Americans face every day in a precarious and unforgiving economy, the daunting and often interconnected challenges that prevent so many from getting — and keeping — a job. Because when all that’s behind you is wreckage, and everything in front is an obstacle, how do you find the road up?