SXSW Film Review: We Can Be Heroes

Give a group of teens an open field and a bunch of foam swords, and watch their imaginations go wild. While it might not be the typical sleepover camp experience, the summer festivities chronicled in the competition doc We Can Be Heroes are both eccentric and excruciatingly normal.

Welcome to the world of Live Action Role Playing, or LARPing, a phenomenon that was unknown to the masses a couple of decades ago but now sits alongside board games and anime in the category of wholesome nerdery.

The special thing about We Can Be Heroes, from directors Carina Mia Wong and Alex Simmons, is that it centers on kids, specifically the kind of kids who would attend a LARP camp in upstate New York, the documentary’s setting. It catches this demographic at a precipitous time. The previous years have been filled with COVID, online school, and lots of isolation.

For some, it’s even more than that. One of the characters in this absolute hodgepodge of personalities is Abby, a young person about to graduate high school with all the stresses that entails, but also with health issues that have changed her life in a permanent way. When we meet them, they show off their new feeding tube and wait anxiously to hear if they’ll be allowed to attend the camp or if it’s too dangerous for them to risk it.

Cloud is a young boy with lots to say, and very emphatic ways of saying it. As much as anyone, the solitude of the pandemic has put him in a rough social spot, and camp is his chance to break out. As we learn about the give and take that comes from group role play, it’s fascinating to see this determined individual butt up against that. He’s easy to root for, like everyone whose story gets told here, but it’s also easy to see how big his feelings and actions can get.

Then there’s Dexter, the writer in the group, always looking to express exactly what’s going on deep inside his teenage heart. This British lad living in Manhattan has multiple books to his credit, but at camp, he’s another participant, desperate to fit into that particular social web. We are made keenly aware of how large his “crush” looms in his singular narrative. We only know her as a pair of red Converse sneakers, but the ups and downs of unrequited teenage love strikes especially hot here.

As the filmmakers said in the Q&A, every person at the camp is the Luke Skywalker of their own story, so picking just a few to focus on seems not enough. Even the counselors play an important role. Over the course of the week captured on film, plans are made, stories are enacted, and like any good escape from the city, the kids each get their mountain top experience. While that is de rigueur, for kids that don’t fit in back home, We Can Be Heroes shows they can literally have the time of their lives.

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We Can Be Heroes

Film, World Premiere

Sunday, March 10, 2:45pm & 3:15pm, Violet Crown Cinema
Wednesday, March 13, 3:15pm & 3:45pm, Alamo South Lamar

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