Girls State review: It’s as if Tracy Flick, the striving high-school heroine of Election, has come to life

Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, the film-makers behind The Overnighters, deservedly took home the grand-jury prize from Sundance with Boys State in 2020. That portrait of a week-long Texas-based programme during which politically minded teens elect and build a state government from the ground up was characterised by ra-ra nationalism, thrusting ambition and dirty tricks.

The female equivalent is a little less Lord of the Flies. The American Legion Auxiliary’s annual democratic experiment brings together 500 16- and 17-year-old girls from Missouri. In a historic first, the 2022 Missouri Boys State is happening on the same college campus, a decision that exposes staggering systemic sexism. While the shirtless boys bump on the football field, the girls have a strict dress code, an infantilising buddy system and no access to gym facilities. The Boys State event hosts contemporary politicians; the girls make do with a pep talk and a xylophone solo.

Tracy Flick, the striving high-school heroine of Election, is swiftly evoked as we meet Emily Worthmore, a proudly conservative teen with designs on the 2040 US presidency. “Every election I’ve put myself in, I’ve won,” she says, “since fourth grade.”

She is one of three candidates aiming for the mock governorship of Missouri Girls State. Divided into the Federalist and Nationalist parties against the nervy backdrop of the overturning of Roe vs Wade, the girls remain commendably respectful of opposing political opinions. A cafeteria debate on abortion is temperate. A clip from the gender-flipped Boys State debate as shared by a liberal attendee, Maddie, shows an angry young man pacing the stage: “This is murder. Life begins at conception.”

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Other dramas are resolved peaceably: new friends Brooke and Nisha Murali vie for the same position without friction. Even Emily, an outspoken conservative, turns out to be agreeably adaptable. When things don’t go her way she dusts herself down and writes a damning exposé about the funding of Girls State (which receives a third of the budget allocated to Boys State). The compassionate directors of The Mission wisely let the young women do the talking. Seven credited cinematographers are there to capture every compelling moment.

Girls State is on limited release and on Apple TV+ from Friday, April 5th