After becoming involved in a fatal shooting accident in his home, a New England boy on the verge of adulthood suddenly finds himself at the center of the storm dividing his town between antagonic older residents and the newcomers gentrifying the region, caught between himself, his family, the local police, his girlfriend, and a reactionary vigilante group in his school.
American Youth is a controlled, essential, and powerful tale of a teenager in southern New England who is confronted by a terrible moral dilemma following a firearms accident in his home. This tragedy earns him the admiration of a sinister gang of boys at his school and a girl associated with them. Set in a town riven by social and ideological tensions-an old rural culture in conflict with newcomers-this is a classic portrait of a young man struggling with the idea of identity and responsibility in an America ill at ease with itself.
