Boys State

Boys State (2020) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM. Every summer eleven hundred Texas teenagers descend on a single campus, split into two parties and spend a week building a make-believe government — primaries, platforms, attack ads and all.

Directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss stay out of it and let the camera follow the candidates around the gym floor. A few stand out. Steven Garza, the soft-spoken son of immigrants, wins votes by actually talking to people; René Otero arrives knowing no one and ends up running a party. Others have already mastered the dark arts of spin at seventeen. What plays out is democracy in miniature, by turns hilarious and genuinely unsettling.

The film took the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and found an audience well beyond the festival circuit. Stream Boys State (2020) online on iFILM.