Save money with these awesome Insider Deals, some 500 high school girls gathered in Missouri for a weeklong mock government camp in which they elected their own governor and seated an all-female Supreme Court that would rule on their own bodies.
Even before “Boys State” premiered, the filmmakers were contemplating a “sibling” film. While there are many corollaries, “Girls State” is, in compelling and illuminating ways, not a twin to “Boys State.” What Worthmore and others realized was that the system of Girls State wasn’t the same as the Boys State being held across the campus at Lindenwood University. The girls' program was funded by a separate organization, the American Legion Auxiliary, had a dress code that some deemed too strict and didn’t schedule sports activities the way the boys' did. There was a camp cheer for the girls but not the boys.
“Even in going into ‘Boys State,’ people said, ‘It’s going to be Lord of the Flies.’ And to some degree that is what you see. They’re competitive and they lash out. But more what we saw — and it was overwhelming with ‘Girls State’ — was the need to connect,” McBaine says. “I think that’s one of the best, most humanizing moments in the story,” Worthmore says. “It was definitely something I needed to hear. I know that I don’t need to be perfect, but at the same time you don’t want to mess up.”