Guidelines explores the world of adolescence through a series of tableaux that illustrate the occasionally trying existence of young people at a rural secondary school. Emphasizing the contrasts between the regulated environment of the classroom and the beckoning freedom of the great outdoors, the film is structured around the teens’ meetings with various authority figures in the institution whose job it is to “set them straight.” During these encounters behind closed doors, the students’ day-to-day concerns emerge through the diversity of the stories they tell.