An autumn road trip through the United States to discover what, if anything, unites us.
SYNOPSIS
A filmmaker goes on a road trip throughout the United States in the fall of 2024. It’s a season that evokes apple pie, golden leaves, football, and also, a sense of an ending as long summer days turn to cool autumn nights. Against this backdrop of American wholesomeness and change, the presidential election looms ominous. Both sides think the wrong outcome could be the end. Are we a nation on the precipice? Or is there something still quintessentially American holding us together?
Searching for answers, the filmmaker crisscrosses the U.S., visiting local iconic happenings: a cranberry harvest in Massachusetts, a pilgrim reenactment in Virginia, a turkey hunt in Arkansas, homecoming at Princeton, a second line in New Orleans. Mixed in are personal moments with friends she visits and strangers she encounters: a birthday, a formal, a wedding.
There are no expert talking heads telling us what to think. Instead we’re dropped into the sights and sounds of these American experiences, left to make our own interpretations. At other times, we’re in direct conversation with everyday individuals grappling with existential concerns about escalating wars and rising temperatures, the state of our economy and precarious democracy.
Are we really as fragmented and defeatist as the media suggests, or is there still a sense of possibility and hopefulness about the American future? This essay film tackles big questions with an intimate and light-hearted approach in an attempt to discover: has our fate already been written, or is the future in our hands?
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Director Alexis Neophytides
Alexis Neophytides is a documentary filmmaker based in New York City. Her most recent film, Fire Through Dry Grass, co-directed with Andres “Jay” Molina, documents Jay and his fellow Reality Poets’ art and activism inside their nursing home during the COVID 19 pandemic. A NYT Critic's Pick, FIRE premiered at BlackStar in 2023, where it won the jury award for best feature documentary, and is broadcast + streaming on POV/PBS. Her first feature-length documentary, Dear Thirteen, explores coming of age in the modern world. It premiered at DOC NYC in 2022 and is distributed by Journeyman Pictures + Grasshopper Film. Alexis is the co-creator, co-director and producer of Neighborhood Slice, an Emmy nominated public television documentary series that tells the stories of longtime New Yorkers who've held onto their little corner of the city despite fast-growing gentrification. She produced and directed the series 9.99, for which she won a NY Emmy. Her work has been supported by ITVS, the Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, IDA, Perspective Fund, Fork Films, Working Films, the New York State Council on the Arts and the NYC Women’s Fund. She is also a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Grantee.
Over the past decade Alexis has developed filmmaking programs, implemented curricula and taught students all around NYC, including The Video Lab at The New School, The TEAK Fellowship and OPEN DOORS. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MA in Media Studies from The New School.
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