Latest in Boys State

The annual 50-state student government conference Boys State, sponsored by the American Legion, first came to filmmaker Jesse Moss’ attention after reading about the Texas edition in the Washington Post. At each summer’s conferences, boys gather to set up a mock-state legislature — they organize political campaigns…

The January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol underscored the precarious state of American democracy in a time of deep political polarization. But the Emmy-contending Apple Original Film Boys State offers some hope that bridging ideological differences remains a possibility. The documentary directed and produced by Je…

EXCLUSIVE: With Oscar nomination voting underway, Apple TV+ is releasing an unseen portion of its documentary feature contender Boys State. The film, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, goes inside the annual Boys State event in Texas where a thousand high school…

UPDATED with video: The pressure was on when directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine set about making Boys State, their film documenting an annual exercise in Texas that gives high school boys the chance to practice democracy in action. Why? The program lasts just six days. "We’re used to shooting documentaries over…

Winner of the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and recently taking Best Political Documentary at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, the Apple and A24 Films release Boys State came to Deadline’s For the Love of Docs series Tuesday night as I moderated a conversation with…

Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art Thursday announced a virtual return of the 49th annual New Directors/New Films festival rescheduled from last March to December 9-20. The 50-year old fest's 2020 lineup of 24 features and 10 shorts will be available to audiences nationwide for the first time…

The American Film Institute’s annual documentary film festival will be online this year, the latest event to be reimagined in the face of the coronavirus crisis, and it will open with the project Boys State.  The festival will run from June 17 to 21, and films will be available to view on DOCS.AFI.com. The festival…

Apple said Wednesday that it has pulled out of attending SXSW, the film, TV, music and tech festival that is due to kick off next week in Austin. The move, which Deadline has confirmed, includes exits for the premieres of Apple originals like Spike Jonze’s documentary Beastie Boys Story. Apple joins fellow tech…

Giving Voice, the film from James D. Stern and Fernando Villena that had bowed in the Documentary Features section at the Sundance Film Festival, has won the event’s Festival Favorite Award. The honor, separate from the juried and audience awards handed out Saturday as the festival wrapped its 2020 edition, is…

Apple and A24 have acquired all global rights for Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s documentary Boys State.  A report said it went for $10 million, however, we learned Boys State actually went for $12M, which makes it a sales record for a documentary out of Sundance. The previous documentary sales record at $10M was…