The Bel Air High School color guard is the subject of this documentary from former Vice Media producer Allen Otto, a San Antonio native, University of Texas at Austin graduate and gay man based in Brooklyn, N.Y. Otto, whose work has been featured on HBO, Discovery+ and Hulu, has been fascinated by the color guard world since high school. He focuses his first feature-length documentary on five members of the all-female team as they navigate the pressures of national competition, practice, high school, adolescence, identity, home life, the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, and COVID-19. “Having guard was my distraction,” Jesie says in the film. — Doug Pullen
