Girls State tracks the high-schoolers taking part in a mock government simulation just as a devastating supreme court ruling is about to change everything
Nearly seven years ago, the film-makers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine went to Texas to see government in action, albeit one run by teenagers. The country was well into the Trump administration – Muslim bans and kids in cages dominated the headlines – when the two began filming an annual American Legion convention known as Boys State, a weeklong mock government simulation for 1,000 high school boys, in the summer of 2018. The duo tried to film a similar state program for girls, but were rebuffed; they ended up with Boys State, an incisive Apple TV+ documentary that captured the chaos, promise and peril of young masculinity in the US and went on to win the grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020.
But what if the girls were present? How well can a government simulation work without women? “There was unfinished business at Boys State,” McBaine told the Guardian, “which is that every time a cluster of boys or the legislature or even candidates at Boys State brought up the topic of abortion, it got very awkward very quickly. Because to their credit, many of the boys felt like it was not okay to talk about that issue without girls in the room.” The two wanted a Girls State, where such issues would be top of mind. “What we didn’t know, timing-wise, was how top of mind it was going to be,” said McBaine.
