In 2004, just as the career of award-winning artist Beverly McIver was skyrocketing—she’d had her first solo show in New York the year before—her mother died unexpectedly, and the casual promise she’d made her came due. The single, workaholic professor, and artist had to interrupt her life to take care of her big sister, Renee, who functions at about the level of a third grader. In this arresting look at the family ties that bind and sometimes constrict, Beverly is remarkably candid about the challenges of fulfilling her promise. But fulfill it she does; the centrality of family to her life and work are evident in her vibrant, expressionistic paintings. In a notable fusion of subject and film, the same themes that fuel the artist’s distinguished body of work—race, class, family, disability—propel this cinematic biographical portrait. Both are a testament to the transformative power of art.  SM