Debate Team - Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser

About the Film

Debate Team is a documentary film that delves into the strange, exciting, and insular world of competitive collegiate debate. It is a complex world of logic and wit, where the debaters drag around tubs filled with hundreds of thousands of evidence documents, verbally battle at 360 words per minute, and nearly every argument ends in nuclear annihilation.

Travel behind the scenes and into the front row as the teams prepare for, and compete at a series of tournaments culminating at the 2005 National Debate Championship held at San Francisco State University.

Through interviews and competitions, the history and arcane rules of debate are revealed, as well as the true motivations that drive these students and the mythology that sustains them. Ultimately, what emerges is a picture of an intense and fragile world filled with irony and absurdity. It is a world threatened from the outside and from within. Whether trying to rescue or raze it, these debaters are the superheroes of that world.