THE FIELD TRIP - MEGHAN O'HARA, MIKE ATTIE & RODRIGO OJEDA-BECK (2021)

The Field Trip was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. It is hard to know what to take away from this documentary, in which children are given a taste of the real world by running a microcosmic city for a day, and perhaps the directors meant it to be ambiguous. From a British perspective, it's an indictment of the way all American kids are told they are special and can be high-achievers (like president): it instills unachievable goals and the idea that success is classed by earnings rather than happiness. To make matters worse, the children had already been classed as CFOs, CEOs or waiters by their teachers, indicating their futures were already mapped out for them by others. I think this is what we are meant to take away from it; the idea that children are being told one thing, but are quick to fall into their "given" positions in life. Of course, it could just be a mirror to adult society, and the minutiae of an everyday life controlled by money.