THE BOYS OF BARAKA ***

(three stars)

SEVENTY percent of black boys in Baltimore do not graduate from high school. They’re more likely to land in jail – or a cemetery.

But there is hope, according to “The Boys of Baraka,” an uplifting documentary by Heidi Ewing and (former private eye) Rachel Grady.

Each year, 20 “at-risk” boys are saved from the mean streets of Charm City and sent for two years to an experimental school, the Baraka School, in rural Kenya, where they live with giraffes and zebras rather than cops and drug dealers.

The directors concentrate on four of these kids, two of them brothers. All are shown to be people with distinct personalities – not faceless statistics on a police report.

Their lives improve, although not always in the ways they hope. But who’s complaining?

Running time: 84 minutes. Not rated (mature themes). At the Film Forum, Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue.