Frontrunners

Frontrunners, a feature-length documentary, follows the most recent elections for student body president at the ultra-competitive Stuyvesant High School in New York City, and explores how politics works at its most nascent level.

As the film unfolds, the candidates might seem like archetypes. There is the favorite, a popular heartthrob; the rich cheerleader; the slacker jock; and a lone wolf. But each ends up being more complex than they might first appear.

The candidates worry about their images and see their shortcomings, and they pick running mates accordingly. Can you really win without an Asian on your ticket—when the voting public is more than 50 percent Asian? Is an all-female ticket automatically a loser? Will anyone vote for an outsider? And who will be charismatic enough to win the televised debate and knowledgeable enough about the real issues to impress the newspaper editorial board?

In politics, nothing is inevitable, especially at Stuyvesant, where the voting public is made up of skeptical students who may be the best and brightest in the country. And Stuyvesant's 3,200 students, from the five boroughs, reflect the diversity of the entire nation—teenagers of all ethnicities and economic backgrounds, children of privilege mixing with first generation immigrants, all there based on merit.

As Frontrunners unfolds, the story takes on undertones familiar to anyone who has been a spectator to a national campaign, revealing that young people have an implicit understanding of how strategy, race, gender, personality, platforms, charisma, height and hairstyle figure into a winning campaign.

Teenagers, it turns out, are also political animals. But in the end, Frontrunners is also about a bunch of very smart, very funny teenagers who take things seriously, regardless of the stakes.

Trailer

Credits

Director: Caroline Suh
Producer: Erika Frankel
Cinematographer: Gregory Mitnick
Editor: Jane Rizzo
Running time: 83 min.
Website: www.frontrunnersthefilm.com
Article: Stumping on the Teen Trail: 'FrontRunners' Follows a High School Election

About the Filmmaker

CAROLINE SUH has produced numerous documentaries for PBS, Trio (Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate), History Channel (10 Days: Antietam), A&E and Sundance Channel (Iconoclasts), among others. Frontrunners is her first documentary feature as director. Suh currently has two feature documentaries in development.