An American Pastoral

It’s 2023, and in a small conservative town in Pennsylvania an intense cultural and ideological battle is raging around the public school curriculum. With elections approaching for the majority of seats on the school board, fundamentalist board candidates are on the campaign trail, roaming Elizabethtown’s leafy neighborhoods.

The rise of white supremacy, conspiracism and Christian nationalism are unstoppable in the ranks of the local Republican Party. Democrats justifiably fear this will bring a ban on literature with ‘sexual content’ and the stigmatization of LGBTQ+ children. The camera is present over the course of many months, observing at intensely uneasy board meetings, on the streets and in the churches, where there is no overlap between worldviews. A paper-thin layer of civility shrouds the all-pervasive sense of distrust, anger and fear.

It is almost always adults we see championing a future course for the younger generation—the young people we see in school hallways and the classic yellow school buses. This tense and dystopian portrait lays bare the fragility of the democratic process in a deeply divided society.