In the Sundance award winner, teenage boys gather to simulate government in Texas. The result is part Lord of the Flies, part promising future
In the summer of 2018, as the midterms heated up and the
Trump Administration made a national flashpoint out of America’s southern border, over a thousand high school boys descended on the state capitol in Austin, Texas, with one mission: elect and run a state government.
The week-long simulation of representative democracy known as “Boys State”, designed to cultivate America’s next generation of political leaders (prior participants include
Bill Clinton, Cory Booker and Dick Cheney), had made headlines the year prior for passing a resolution for
Texas to secede from the Union. That debacle – a miniature of America’s rightwing, spectacle-hijacked political system – caught the attention of married film-makers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, who joined the boys at the capitol, cameras in hand.