A politically divided Bucks County community is the subject of a new Sundance documentary
The five-part docuseries will explore the last purple subsection in the Philly suburbs.
A documentary series about a politically split Bucks County community is set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday.
Bucks County, USA chronicles one “painfully divided community” that spirals into a “battleground for distrust and personal attacks” after the COVID-19 pandemic strikes, according to the film’s synopsis.
As politically opposing leaders vie for school board control and policymaking power, Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson and Robert May place 14-year-old best friends Evi and Vanessa at the center of the growing contention.
The two teenagers closely observe as their parents and community splinter over differing political beliefs. They see county officials and residents fight over COVID-19 safety measures, including the move to virtual learning, mask requirements, and other mitigation practices. Some parents even face threats for their support of the safety proposals.
But instead of their family’s opposing political views affecting their friendship, Evi and Vanessa show their community how it’s possible to find common ground in the last purple county in the Philly region.
“The series explores whether this community can follow Evi and Vanessa’s example to find common humanity in ‘the other side,’” the film synopsis explains. “It asks: “Can Bucks County — and America as a whole — break the cycle and find a new path forward?”
Levinson and May visited the swing county in late 2021 after listening to an episode of the New York Times podcast, The Daily, which focused on school board battles in the once-idyllic area. Once there, the two directors discovered plenty of political discord and a clear direction for the project. They started filming in 2022.
Levinson and May decided to produce an impartial and unbiased exploration of community division and make Evi and Vanessa the central subjects, instead of the adults in the heated school board meetings.
“This is not [a series] about heroes and villains,’” Levinson told Variety. “It’s about what happened. Why this is such a conflict, and why it’s become so difficult that rational people can’t come to some kind of a consensus.”
The five-part docuseries premieres just months after the historic 2024 presidential election, which saw President Donald Trump’s political rallies in Bucks County help secure his victory over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
While Trump lost three of the four suburban counties, he flipped three key Bucks towns — Bensalem, Tullytown, and Penndel — that had voted Democratic in 2016 and 2020.
Bucks County, USA shifts from COVID-19 to a whirlwind of other hot-button political topics, including issues of LGBTQ+ rights, racism, sexualization, book banning, religion, and the 2024 presidential election.
“As filmmakers, we take no political sides, make no political statements, and have no agenda other than to present the devastating toll that this division is taking on both adults and students across the political spectrum in our nation,” Levinson and May said in a press statement.
The festival will present the first two episodes of Bucks County, USA, and preview future installments of the series.
The series’ distribution and release plans beyond the festival have not been announced.