For filmmaker Adam Meeks, making “Union County” was a way to reconnect with his home state.
The new drama details two foster brothers, played by Will Poulter (“Midsommar”) and Noah Centineo (“To All the Boys”), in an Ohio rehabilitation program for opioid addiction. It premiered Friday at the Esquire Theatre.
“I moved away from here when I was six, but my family remained. Getting to come back to Ohio as an adult and really get to know it and fall in love with it was what made me want to tell this story … I didn’t write the script and then say, ‘Where can we film this?'” Meeks said. “From the very beginning, it was always a love letter to this part of Ohio where I’m from.”
“Union County” blends fiction and non-fiction as actors like Poulter and Centineo interact with real-life workers at the Adult Recovery Court in Bellefontaine, Ohio. It’s received rave reviews since it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival thanks to tremendous performances across the board and the film’s realistic, compassionate look at dealing with addiction.
As mentioned, Meeks began learning more about his Ohio roots while attending NYU’s film school. In 2017, his grandmother, a Union County native, became very ill and he often visited the area to spend time with her. After she passed away, he stuck around to get closer to his extended family that he’d never known, as he mainly grew up in Montana and Oregon.
“Post-college, I was like kind of looking for a sense of home and a sense of roots … I started to really see Ohio as the place that I’m from, and began to connect with it in a deeper way,” he said. “And then as I was really closely examining this place where I’m from, you didn’t have to look very hard to see folks really struggling with the opioid epidemic at that time, and my extended family had friends and loved ones and people who were very near and dear to us who were struggling with it.”
While doing research on Ohio’s struggles with opioid addiction, he met Judge Kevin P. Braig — a University of Cincinnati graduate, a drug court judge and one of the film’s eventual stars — who invited him to sit in on one of his meetings.
“In that meeting, I saw this counter-narrative to the epidemic that I was immediately very moved and inspired by, which showed this community of people showing up for each other and helping each other getting back on their feet,” Meeks said. “So that’s how the film came about, by incorporating much of the real program and the participants and the staff who run it … I saw so much beauty in the local culture, the landscape of the place, the community that I’d gotten to know, both within the recovery community and the overall local community. It became very personal for me.”
By 2019, Meeks had created a short film about the area, also titled “Union County” and featuring real-life people from the area. It premiered at the Berlinale International Film Festival to critical acclaim, which allowed him to forge a path to turn the short into his first feature-length film.
Across the next few years, Meeks returned to Ohio to do even more research on how the opioid epidemic had affected both the area he’s from and the state at large. By 2024, he had put together a production team, gathered funding, and had the chance to meet with both Poulter and Centineo on a Zoom call. Funnily enough, both actors had just finished filming Alex Garland’s 2025 film “Warfare” together.
“We were trying to feel out the right actors for the role and who would work in the hybrid process we were envisioning, and then both Will and Noah reached out to me in the same week because they’d both read the script at their agencies and had big hearts for the story,” he said. “It was perfect, because they had both just done Warfare and so they already had a connection. I remember Noah saying early on ‘this is so exciting because I think of Will as like a big brother in my real life,’ and so it allowed them to bring their pre-existing brotherly relationship to the brothers they were playing on screen.”
With the full-length “Union County,” Meeks hopes to dispel several myths about the area.
“I think oftentimes when the Midwest is depicted, especially within this kind of story, it’s depicted as a very kind of bleak and barren place. And for me, that’s just not how I’ve experienced Ohio,” he said. “It’s an extremely lush landscape in a beautiful and very culturally and historically rich place. And so, while trying to upend stereotypes and cliches about addiction and recovery, I also wanted to do so with Ohio.”
But most of all, Meeks hopes that audiences come away feeling sympathetic to those who struggle with addiction.
“I wanted to give folks a chance to see organically and truthfully what someone starting to get back on their feet looks like, and to see that it is possible. I also just hope that the film helps people look past the stigmas of addiction and recovery, and see it with more complexity and humanity and empathy,” he said. “It’s about a place and a community and many people that are beautiful and doing beautiful work and deserve our care and our attention. And so I hope that this film gives people a chance to see this place, this community and these people through that same lens.”
“Union County” is playing now at the Esquire and Kenwood Theatres. For more information, visit the Esquire’s official website.
