ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - In 2018, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss went to 2018 political conference in Austin, Texas called Boys State where teenage boys would get to a taste of what the world of Politics truly feels like.
While 2018 Boys State conference was rather calmer compared to the previous year where Texas Boys State voted to secede from the Union, the documentary on it that was released on Apple TV+ on Aug. 20, 2020 and debuted at the Sundance Music Festival eight months before drew rave reviews.
Four years later, McBaine and Moss brought back out their camera, but this time what would the scenario be like if the government was run by girls?
Girls State, which premiered last week, was filmed in the St. Louis-area at Lindenwood University in 2022.
"In Texas with the boys, we filmed with 1,000 boys, in Missouri, four years later in 2022, we filmed with 500 girls," said Moss, who spoke to KMOX's Total Information A.M. "It's kind of a grand democratic experience: an attempt to find common ground and conduct civil discourse. Can young people actually talk to each other when they disagree about their politics?"
During the filming process, McBaine and Moss discovered there were a few difference from filming Boys State and Girls State.
"The Texas Boys State Program was a wild ride, from two hours in, they release kids to go get signatures, they splits into two parties and it get's tribal pretty quickly." said McBride. "What we witnessed with Girls State was that it was a slower burn. They get slow into talking about politics. I think that's frustrating for some of the kids we were following who are experienced debaters, head of their school government, they were ambitious kids who wanted to get to the meat and potatoes conversations of politics."
When the camp took place at Lindenwood University in 2022, it was the first time in their-80 year history that the school had both the Boys and Girls States conferences taking place at the same time.
"The girls look over and see that the boys are doing things a little bit differently," said Moss. "They start to question why that is and the film I think is a powerful metaphor to show our society that women are operating with fewer expectations, resources and held back in a way, sometimes even by themselves and showing their reluctance to get into politics, while the boys are eager."
The documentary Girls State is available on Apple TV+
