The town of Marathon, Texas, has about 400 residents. When we visited, the middle school had only 11 students. One of them — Malachi — was obsessed with the dictator Joseph Stalin.
When Malachi heard about the Texas History Day competition, he wrote a play about the Soviet dictator, and enlisted his friends Cayden, Lyric and Jurem to act as civilians and henchmen. We spent a week following the boys during their frenzied rehearsals for the state competition, under the guidance of their bemused teachers. Our short documentary, “Stalin Boys,” captures a particular moment in a middle school education, in which boys grapple with a dark history for the first time.
This raised many questions, including: What is communism? What went wrong? And, most important — what was Stalin’s favorite color? Ora De Kornfeld and Bianca Giaever are an Emmy Award-winning directing duo. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles.
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