Plot Summary – In an unusual experiment, a thousand 17-year-old boys from Texas join together to build a representative government from the ground up.

★★★★★ 

Watched 25 Nov, 2020

Rarely can I say that a film changed my life or world-view, but Boys State accomplishes this. I think a documentary is successful when you have to Google everything about it just to make sure what you watched is real. Not only did I have to do that, but I was also so fascinated by the subject matter that I checked out all the characters’ social media. Purely as a film, Boys State is incredible. The cinematography is some of the best I’ve seen in a documentary and some shots are so evocative, you yearn for more. The way the story is told is also so heartwarming and there’s genuinely so much heart-wrenching emotion in this movie. The characters they chose to portray in Boys State are all so interesting and three dimensional as people. Rene Otero is one of the greatest characters in cinema and he’s a real person which is so cool. But I don’t think that it’s the merit of it’s pure cinematic achievements that makes this film such a revelation. It’s the exploration of politics in the diverse michrocosm of liberals and conservatives that makes it so resonant. Through these teenagers, the film explores almost everything in modern-day politics, the good, the bad and the shocking. We see a very deep reflection of human behaviour and I had to think about everything I saw. The ending/climax is genuinely so heart-warming. Boys State accomplishes so much in 110 minutes, it was very eye-opening. It didn’t reveal any facets of politics I was not already aware of but the way it explores it, in a truly bipartisan, unbiased, untouched lens made me re-think how I think of politics today. I think Boys State is an absolute must-watch. It is my favourite film of 2020 so far and it’s up there in my top 10 films of all time. Everyone has to watch this, it’s on Apple TV+ if you have that subscription.

PS – It’s by A24 bro come on.