The best documentaries take you places you don't normally have access to.
Overview
"I'm not black, I'm not white, not foreign, just different in the mind. Different brains, that's all," explains 15-year-old Billy in Jennifer Venditti's provocative coming of age film. Following Billy as he bicycles through the quiet streets of small town Maine, we watch him traverse the frustrating gap between imagination and reality, grappling with isolation and first-time young love. By turns exhilarating and disturbing, we see the world from the intimate view of an expressive and seemingly fearless outsider.
Director and cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
A raw, touching, unfiltered look at the teenage angst that Hollywood usually turns into brain-dead comedy.
Billy's resilience, though, is nothing short of amazing. Not to mention part of growing up.
What you ultimately take from the film is the awareness that this smart, self-aware, uncensored kid has been playing to a camera in his own head since well before Venditti came along.
Billy the Kid, a movie that's as interesting as it is dewy-eyed, may be the rare snapshot of an adolescent 'outcast' who is really the guy made for fame, with a built-in radar for how to present himself in front of the camera.
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