For the last decade, the Adult Recovery Court in Bellefontaine has met every Monday to aid people with addiction who are coming out of the criminal justice system. The court helps participants find jobs, housing and transportation.
Logan County Common Pleas Court Judge Keith Braig heads the Monday meetings. He said it’s not exactly cinematic.
“Nothing's blowing up and nobody's rescuing anybody,” he said.
And yet, earlier this winter, Braig watched his program – and himself – on the silver screen at the Sundance Film Festival.
Many films have set out to capture the crisis of drug or alcohol addiction. But far fewer have focused on the long, uneven process of recovery. “Union County,” turns the lens on that often-overlooked journey by following Braig’s drug court.
The film, directed by Adam Meeks, a filmmaker from Ohio, opens in select theaters across the U.S. on Friday, Aug. 14.
‘Charting a different path forward’
In the film, Cody Parsons is navigating drug court for the first time.
The story follows Cody and his brother Jack as they work toward recovery. While the brothers are fictional creations, played by Will Poulter and Noah Centineo, respectively, their stories are interwoven with documentary footage of Bellefontaine’s drug court, where real participants share weekly dispatches on getting sober.
“I got to spend Saturday and Sunday with my family, got to see my kids and they were really excited,” said one participant in her court testimony in the film. “I did a little treasure hunt for my kids for them to find their Easter baskets.”
Director Adam Meeks created this blend of documentary and fiction after visiting family in central Ohio and watching a drug court meeting for the first time.
“I was just completely blown away by the empathy and humanity in that room and this kind of community showing up for itself,” he said. “In this room, there were people who were actually charting a different path forward and getting back on their feet.”
Grounded in reality
Meeks said he spent years getting to know drug court participants and facilitators, like court administrator Annette Deao. She plays herself in the movie, fighting tirelessly to counsel the brothers through relapse.
Deao happened to have four years of theater school under her belt. But the role wasn’t exactly a stretch: Cody’s story closely reflects the experience of the people she works with every day.
“It shows so much dignity for the people in recovery,” Deao said. “One of the things I've worked on in my career is really working against the stigma of ‘someone with a substance abuse disorder is a bad person.’ They're not, they have a bad problem.”
Rather than dwelling on peoples’ mistakes, the movie lingers on mundane moments: cleaning up balloons after the program’s graduation ceremony, performing drug tests in front of court personnel and hanging up posters in a sober living facility.
Meeks said the movie’s pace mirrors the journey of recovery.
“That's also the thing that the characters [are] up against when trying to figure out how to build their time and their life and find a certain kind of day-to-day, moment-to moment fulfillment without using,” he said.
A new perception of rural Ohio
Meeks said so often he sees media that only focuses on overdose death numbers, rather than the people working daily to find a new path. He hopes this intimate portrayal of recovery can shift people's perception of rural Ohio from bleak to blossoming.
“This is also about pointing the camera towards the place that I thought was kind of underappreciated or misrepresented and being like, ‘Look how beautiful this is,’” he said.
Judge Braig said the fact that people care enough to set up cameras in his courtroom at all has already inspired hope for his participants. He’s started to use the film as an example of the joys that can come from sober life.
“If you just show up every day and do what you're supposed to do, something good will find you,” he said. “And it might even be a movie star."
