Teenagers at a secondary school in the Canadian provinces. A time between childhood and adulthood where boundaries are tested and overstepped. One day they’re still drawing tattoos on their arms with felt tips and making papier-mâché fish in class, the next smoking between lessons, easily capable of pointing out the local pot dealer. This particular aspect of their daily reality – breaking rules, discipline problems at school and conflicts with other students – shine through in the long conversations conducted between the adolescents and their social workers. The school is less interesting in this context as an educational institution than as society’s last chance of having an impact on its young. Just as they are collectively vaccinated here against diseases, this is also where they have moral guidelines for how to live together in society laid out for them.
The film’s own approach has nothing to do with social education however. Its calmly observed conversations and carefully composed images of the teenagers in their free time articulate a sense of interest and empathy for this odd period in life, content to patiently watch the sweet bird of youth in its attempts to take flight. (Berlinale 2014)
