Being Young is Not Easy


American Teen
Sundance Institute at Brookyln Academy of Music
May 29 to June 8


At last night’s opening night gala for the Sundance Film Institute at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), they started things off with the NY premiere of the documentary film American Teen, written and directed by Nanette Burstein. Following the day-to-day lives of five very different teenagers in the small-town of Warsaw, Indiana in their senior year of high school, she uses interviews and even animation to vividly update the common struggles teens go through in this day and age, that are emotional and awkward.

While it can be argued that every teen movie portrays the same adolescent stereotypes, American Teen is a film that shows, without trying, the vulnerability of being young and the struggles that they go through to fit in, while being funny and poignant. It's a good film with people you can relate to and care about as they find their way out of the cliché’s of high school and into their adult lives.