When We Were Boys began as an idea in early 2006. I was thinking about the moment when you’re thirteen and you look at yourself in the mirror and wonder who you are- and decide you better figure it out fast. A world of emotion is happening under the surface as we ask ourselves questions and keep the answers to ourselves. I decided to make a film that would serve as a ‘still life’ –that would capture this unexpressed adolescent culture.

I visited a number of schools, both public and private, single sex and co-ed, and decided to focus on the experience of boys. Many films and books have explored the challenges for teen girls, but the emotional world of boys is still relatively new terrain. Boys are expected to be less emotional; ‘boys don’t cry’ still has its effects in the schoolyard. Recently, literature has started to emerge on the question of boys’ experience of adolescence.

As well as delving into a boys’ world I was interested in the culture of the privileged and the particular experience of prep school boys. In June 2006 I began discussions with Royal St. Georges College, an elite Anglican choir school in Toronto. After a period of months they agreed to have the film based there, and we began filming in February 2007. RSGC is a very different world from the one I grew up in. I come from a long line of Jewish artists and activists; attended public school and had very little contact with private school kids.

I am drawn to make films in worlds that can be easily stereotyped, and to look for what is more complicated within them. I like to challenge the viewer through an experience of empathy with characters they didn’t expect to identify with. I do it to challenge my own preconceptions as well. I was often struck by the progressive thinking within this quite traditional school, though I also noticed that the boys’ privilege was buffering them from the realities of the outside world.

What I found through two years of making the film was that the boys were very emotional, but their feelings were often buried. As I observed the boys being positioned for success, I noticed that their lives were becoming more solitary, full of unexpressed emotion. This film takes you on a journey into this unspoken world. We have attempted to create an emergent experience in which you feel what its like to be a boy.

Sarah Goodman