For his first feature, Adam Meeks paints a love letter to recovery and addicts seeking rehabilitation with “Union County,” an Ohio-set drama flecked with vérité realism that premieres this week in Sundance‘s U.S. Dramatic Competition. Blending fiction and documentary, the sales title stars British actor Will Poulter in a searingly heartfelt performance as Cody Parsons, a young American on his own journey to opioid recovery against a plaintive rural backdrop. Meanwhile, his foster brother Jack (Noah Centineo, in a strikingly mature turn) is on the more tenuous edge of redemption himself, closer to relapsing even amid a court-mandated drug program.
“Union County” was shot on location in and around the small town of Bellefontaine, pronounced “Bell Fountain,” where the population totals under 15,000. NYU Tisch grad Meeks expands his own 2020 short film of the same name to bring his cast and crew to his home state. There, the filmmaker and actors embedded themselves in the innerworkings of the recovery program, where participants are held accountable with regular court check-ins and are assigned counselors like Annette Deao (an actual counselor who plays herself in the film).
“This one felt very unique solely because I’d never really done something that was so much predicated on the support and hospitality of the community that we were representing,” Poulter told IndieWire ahead of Sundance. “The recovery community in Ohio was so welcoming of us and allowed us space in their rooms in a very literal sense. One of the things that really set the tone for the trust that was required was the fact that Adam himself is from that community. He grew up in Ohio, and he learned not just about the plight of addiction and the amount of struggle going on in his hometown, but also he learned about the immense amount of progress and the hope that was being kept alive through this incredible recovery work, led by Annette Deao and the whole team within Union County.”
The film’s standout sequences feature actual people in recovery as they stand before the judge and recount their evolving triumphs and hardships, working their way toward the next stage in the program. Meeks, Poulter, and Centineo shot them on the actual days of the court meetings, where real-life participants could volunteer or opt out of going on camera.
“What you see in the film is actually their court date with the judge, for their real-life situation. At some point in time, we didn’t know when the judge would call me and Will up to do our scripted scene in the middle of the participants having their court date that was also put on camera,” said Centineo, who is also a producer on the film along with Poulter. Centineo also hails from Florida, where opioid addiction hits home.
Months before the shoot, Centineo and Poulter went out to Ohio to sit in on court meetings and get to know Annette. “She’s a healer in the sense that you can call her at 4 o’clock in the morning and something is seriously wrong, and you’re looking to relapse, and she’ll stay on the phone with you until you can make it to the meeting the next day,” Centineo said. “She lives and dies by the people in her community to make sure they are looked after and feel worthy of love and care.”
They also sat in on Narcotics Anonymous meetings and worked with a dialect coach to submerge themselves in the textures of the story, and its real context. Poulter and Centineo then came back to Ohio before filming to live on location — a rare opportunity for actors of their stature.
“It’s gonna sound paradoxical because it won’t shock you to hear that we didn’t have a huge budget on the film, and that opportunity to go into a place ahead of time, spend time in the community you’re representing with the people you’re making the film with, was so unique and not something I associate with bigger-budget projects. It’s quite independent as a choice,” Poulter said.
For Poulter, the film “Union County” is also about rewriting the popular imagination and understanding of what recovery and addiction look like onscreen and in real life. Poulter himself is not a stranger to the topic, as he played a Big Pharma executive in the Hulu series “Dopesick.”
“When we think about addiction and the challenges that are presented by addiction, particularly as it relates to opioids and the specific drugs we’re dealing with in the film, we often conjure up in our minds quite bleak, depressing images,” Poulter said. “I don’t think the film seeks to say anything to suggest that those things aren’t a reality, but what it does do is point to the fact that there are a lot of really hopeful things worth celebrating with this recovery work, and that it happens in beautiful parts of the American countryside. It’s not always dark street corners in the blistering cold. Sometimes it’s happening in the most beautiful of summers.”
Indeed, cinematographer Stefan Weinberger captures a natural beauty worthy of a Kelly Reichardt picture. And “Union County” the film finds plenty of grace notes amid the toughness of Cody’s journey, such as connections he sparks with other people in the program, as well as while settling into a new job.
“The drug court scenes were really inspiring because they were potentially some of the best examples of how effective the drug court recovery program is in terms of reducing the rate of relapse and providing people within the program with the support to be able to make the best possible decisions,” Poulter said. “It’s a really good exemplification of why this program works. Again, something that isn’t necessarily always the focus when we talk about addiction. It’s really important we know these programs exist, and this work is an option. All too often the stigma around addiction, the vilification of addicts, and sometimes the bleakness of how it’s represented means that the hope is lost.”
For Centineo, “Union County” is part of a broader push toward thoughtful storytelling on the heels of a completely different set of films he has starred in, including the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” movies. He runs Arkhum Productions with Enzo Marc, which also produced the Centineo-starring gun-culture satire “Our Hero, Balthazar.”
“Our model was independent films and filmmakers that have a voice that are telling either dangerous stories, stories that are hard to tell, or have their own voice,” Centineo said. “This kid [director Adam Meeks] is my age, and it’s his first feature, and coming out with something that feels so real and so vulnerable and so important. I’m very lucky to have found him.”
Centineo also spoke highly of his co-star Poulter, with whom he acted in Alex Garland and veteran Ray Mendoza’s hyper-realistic Navy SEALs drama “Warfare” from 2025.
“He leads by example. Holy shit, this dude is locked in,” Centineo said. “He would never ask anyone to do anything that he wouldn’t do. He holds himself to extremely high standards, and he held the rest of us to those standards as well. If you needed a ride somewhere, he would have immediately gone with you. If you know something didn’t sit right, he’d help you have a conversation with anyone. He was the centerpiece for our cast. The opportunity to be able to do another film with him, it was like we had already felt like we were brothers.”
“Union County” premieres Sunday, January 25 at the Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
