App developers are the Silicon Valley technocrati next poised to disrupt and determine our e-lives, and women make up less than 20 percent of them. The six-year-old Technovation Challenge strives to make the Web 3.0 of the future a more gender-inclusive place by getting girls into coding early. Participants from high schools all over the world have just three months to create an app that solves a problem in their community.
“CodeGirl,” a chronicle of this year’s Technovation contest, is just as well-intentioned as its subject. It coasts for as long as it can on the feel-good fuel of watching smart, earnest girls talk about creating an app, but with virtually no tension, context, narrative or characterization driving the story, the documentary grows to feel like a parent describing their daughter’s involvement in an international competition.