Ballet shoes is based on the Noel Streatfield book of the same name. It tells the story of three girls in 1930s London. just after the First World War, Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil are orphans, and they are adopted by an excentric explorer, Professor Brown known as "Gum" and raised as sisters by his niece, Sylvia. All three girls have different ambitions for the future, Pauline longs to be an actress, Petrova yearns to be an aviator, and Posy seems born to be a ballerina. As money becomes tight, they struggle to balance personal ambition with the need to survive physically, emotionally, and financially. The sisters' early vow to "put their names in the history books" becomes a promise to keep the family together at all costs. The film is very well acted, and moving and comic by turns.