“Girls State” (dirs. Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss, 2024)
Winner of the U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2020, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ “Boys State” embodied the best and worst of the eponymous tradition that it captured on camera: An annual leadership program, funded by the American Legion and held in almost all 50 states since the 1930s, in which 1,000 or so hyper-ambitious teenage boys from all walks of life are given a week to form and elect a mock government.
On the one hand, their film offered a semi-realistic microcosm of the American system at work, and an optimistic preview of what Gen Z — at least its most politically engaged young men — might bring to the table as they become old enough to and run for office. On the other hand, it reinforced the American Legion’s history of preserving the status quo through a “separate but not so equal” approach that makes it obvious who’s really expected to inherit the power in this country. McBaine and Moss’ sequel film returns to undress Boys State’s underfunded sister program, in which teen girls vie for the kinds of offices that few — if any — women have ever held in the real world. Shot in the purgatorial stretch of time between when the Dobbs memo was leaked and when Roe v. Wade was officially overturned, “Girls State” finds that teenagers are as divided on the issues as the rest of the country, but at the same time it also offers a powerful and encouraging portrait of young women who discover the power of listening to their own voices by sharing in the same primal scream.
Available to stream April 5