PARK CITY, Utah—This year’s Sundance Film Festival hosted films that brought the likes of Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Steven Yeun, Lucy Liu, Dylan O’Brien, and Pedro Pascal to the Utah mountains. So it says a lot that, with that star power, it was abundantly clear within days that the most entertaining ensemble of any project playing in Park City was a group of previously anonymous teen girls from Missouri.
The dynamic young subjects of the crowd-pleasing Girls State received multiple rounds of applause at rousing moments throughout the film’s multiple showings. At a press screening I attended, they received two standing ovations. There was a deserved congratulatory one as the credits rolled and then, after the cast spoke with the audience in a Q&A, one of gratitude: Thank you for being the women who are going to save this country.
Girls State is, as directors Amanda MacBaine and Jesse Moss clarified in their introduction to the film, a “sibling, not a sequel” to their galvanizing 2020 documentary Boys State. That film won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize that year, set the record for the biggest documentary sale in the festival’s history when it was scooped up by Apple for $15 million, and won the Emmy Award for Best Non-Fiction Film.
A sort of Lord of the Flies meets AP U.S. History, Boys State followed a group of teen boys attending the annual Boys State retreat in Texas. Since the 1930s, the American Legion has hosted a civic engagement camp that gave the boys who were accepted free rein to build their own democracy. Elections are held. Courts are formed. Party platforms are constructed. And egos, morals, and social skills clash as the boys debate issues, jockey for votes, and envision a future they’d want, not the one dictated for them by incumbent policy makers.
Conceived in 2017 at a time of great political divide and premiering in 2020 amidst even more amplified, concerning polarization, it was a fascinating look at what the future of unity—or, perhaps, disunity—might be for the country. But through the eyes and personalities of gregarious, wildlife teens, the film was also playful: an invigorating reminder that these civically engaged kids are not as cynical as the rest of us. While some of their Texan views might be concerning, the film served as an entertaining anecdote to disillusionment.
That was all well and good—extremely good, in fact. But now it’s the girls’ turn.
Instead of following the Girls State camp in Texas, this documentary shifts the geography to Missouri, where, for the first time in 80 years, the state would be holding the boys’ and the girls’ events on the same campus at the same time.
From a filmmaking standpoint, that provided ample fodder for “girls rule and boys drool” comedy; a bus carrying both genders to the dorms had the boys boisterously rapping “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice, while the camera zoomed in on one girl who gives one of the most impressive eyes rolls I’ve ever seen.
Hosting both retreats simultaneously also begged for comparisons and, it would turn out, disparities between how the boys and girls are respected, elevated, and, apparently, funded.
The cast of Girls State
Immediately upon arrival, counselors instruct the girls that they must always, for their protection, have a buddy when they walk around campus, and reminded them of their strict, conservative dress codes. (The boys, meanwhile, are free to run around shirtless.) The girls also learn a bonkers, antiquated Girls State anthem they must perform each morning, complete with busy hand and arm choreography that could be useful should any of them one day be asked to help land a plane. “If the boys don’t have to do this, I’m gonna be pissed.” There is even, it turns out, an imbalance in the instruction they receive about policy and government, the discourse that is had about issues, and the investment made in making the boys feel worthy versus the girls.
Beyond the intriguing gender dynamics, Missouri proved an ideal setting because of the states’ unique politics, MacBaine told the audience. Missouri’s political identity is splintered, with large blue-leaning cities and swaths of deeply red rural areas. (“The Squad” member Rep. Cori Bush and conservative Sen. Josh Hawley are both from the state, for example.)
While further exploring the fracturing of political values was certainly a goal of Girls State, the specifics of that polarity became all the more compelling and consequential given the timing of production: Right before filming began, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson opinion, setting the course for overturning Roe v. Wade, leaked. The attendees at Girls State are young women in America, already cognizant of the stakes tied to their political beliefs. But this supercharged the immediacy of the proceedings.
That’s incredible groundwork for a documentary. But that Girls State succeeds at being so exuberantly inspiring and, often, funny is because of the spirited, enlightened, vulnerable, and impressive teens it followed.
Standout star is the extremely ambitious Emily Worthmore, who excitedly announces in her introduction that she has won every election since fourth grade and plans to run for governor, the highest office, at Missouri Girls State. She lists off the dozen or so clubs she belongs to, concluding with “and I started a Bible study at my school.” When she was a freshman, she was asked to list her Top 3 career choices, and she chose president, broadcast journalism, and rock star.
At Girls State, she plans to come out openly as conservative, which she was hesitant to do at her St. Louis-suburb school. How will she be able to tell who is liberal at camp? “I don’t know,” she says, “maybe they’re louder?”
Emily becomes fast friends with Maddie Rowan, despite their ideals being at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Maddie identifies as gay and speaks freely about it, an intriguing element of the modern teenage experience that wasn’t in Boys State: discussion of sexuality and identity, especially in the South. She’s packed pearls for the trip because “pearls feel like government.”
Nisha Murali is an academically confident girl who wishes her social skills were as robust. For her, Girls State is a chance to put herself out there in a way she never would have been comfortable doing before; her bid to be named a Supreme Court justice is the most emotional arc of the film. To prepare for camp, she watches Legally Blonde, which she had never seen (to her friends’ disbelief). Her reaction to Elle Woods: “That is the whitest person I have ever seen.”
Speaking of racial dynamics, Tochi Ihekona is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, who “already knew there was going to be a lot of white girls” before she arrived and surmises that she might be the first Black person some of them have spoken to. A determined policy wonk, from the moment she deboards the bus she’s desperate to “get to the feminism and the empowerment.” She sees Girls State as an opportunity to discover how best to find common ground, relate, and connect with people who don’t share her background or beliefs.
There’s no shortage of engaging “characters” in Girls State, and watching them interact, especially as they debate policy and consider the different ways in which they embrace their womanhood, is like a combination of watching a Christopher Guest movie and an all-teen episode of The West Wing—mixed, I suppose, with some Mean Girls.
It’s a bold thing to do, at such a young age: willingly announce your ideals and political beliefs to be captured on camera for posterity. There’s a certitude that’s certainly emblematic of youth. Who among us isn’t aware of how much our ideologies have changed as we’ve gotten older? Is it responsible, then, to film them as they espouse their platforms?
The audience gasped in horror, for example, as Emily talked about what she saw as the value of private citizens owning automatic rifles. In contrast, they applauded as she expressed her distaste of the “slay, girl boss!” rhetoric that was rampant at Girls State, wondering if it would be considered condescending if the boys were cheered in that way at their camp.
Other girls express their frustration at the prioritizing of camaraderie and uplift over serious political discussion. But they are also self-aware enough to embrace how their communication and ways of relating to each other—even when it comes to ideological debate—is different from how men do the same. There’s a fascinating scene where they are literally braiding each other’s hair as they confront the counselors over their desire for there to be less fluff in their camp and more academic debate, like the boys have.
Girls State finds the humor in gender stereotypes without perpetuating them or making fun. As a snapshot for what it is like for teen girls to navigate a powder keg of socializing during such a formative, emotionally brittle point of their lives, the film is illuminating. But the electrifying context of the abortion debate, particularly among these young women who grew up with ingrained, opposing views of the issue, elevates the film past “entertaining” to “necessary.”
A throughline of the documentary is the crusade to call out and set in motion rectification of the unjust disparities between the boys’ and girls’ camps. When the girls spoke to the Sundance audience during a post-screening Q&A, they were asked if any changes have come from those efforts. Missouri Girls State now has a sports program for the girls too. The dress code has been loosened. Academic instruction is now shared between the boys and girls, allowing Girls State to benefit from Boys State’s outsized financial resources.
Another round of applause broke out after that announcement. There was a giddy, almost intoxicating energy in the theater as the girls left. What was that unfamiliar feeling? Could it be… hope?
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