New Minecraft documentary gets first teaser trailer

I’m happy to report: Polygon made a sports documentary. About Minecraft. And the New York City public education system? Battle of the Boroughs: The Kids Who Build New York City in Minecraft, out Thursday, May 7, is very us.

Directed by our own Simone de Rochefort (who previously co-directed 2024’s The Great Game: The Making of Spycraft), the 40-minute doc chronicles the 2025 Battle of the Boroughs, a NYC Public Schools initiative where students use Minecraft Education to design a more inclusive, sustainable, future-ready version of New York City. Over months of competition — from early classroom brainstorms to the Mayor’s Cup finals — students place digital bricks and crack the code on their understanding of modern society. As you’ll see in the film, the kids grapple with housing inequality, climate resilience, public transit, and the messy realities of political decision-making. All this inside the game that gifted us the Chicken Jockey.

Watch the teaser for Battle of the Boroughs: The Kids Who Build New York City in Minecraft

Having followed the project’s production over the past year, what stands out in the finished doc is how Minecraft becomes less of a gimmick and more of a lens on the creativity of the students as well as the challenges facing today’s educators. What Simone and her collaborators captured over their time embedded in classrooms, and later at the big finals event, defines that classic adage: “show, don’t tell”

Our doc arrives at a fitting moment: Battle of the Boroughs will screen at the 2nd annual NYC Video Game Festival on May 9, alongside the crowning of this year’s champions. If you can’t make it in person, good news: the festival will stream digitally on Twitch, featuring everything from competitive League of Legends and Valorant to the climactic Minecraft finals.

Watch this space for more when we drop Battle of the Boroughs: The Kids Who Build New York City in Minecraft.