Every week, Annette Deao, a drug dependency counselor, sits in the county jail and offers incarcerated people in rural Ohio a chance at recovery. One bright day she meets Cody, a young man who shuffles towards the lectern and quietly says that he’s ready to give it a shot. “His self-respect is in the basement,” said Will Poulter, the British actor who plays the character. “He doesn’t like or accept himself enough to embark on helping himself.”
Directed by Adam Meeks, an Ohio native, Union County is a bruising yet poetic depiction of a real life drug recovery court in Bellefontaine, Ohio, where individuals join long-term treatment programs with daily sobriety testing. Though the film is led by Poulter and Noah Centineo as foster brothers taking steps to get clean, much of the supporting cast is made up of first-time actors who share their real – and often painful and non-linear – stories of recovery. The hybrid of narrative feature and documentary-esque elements combine in a deeply affecting watch that is anchored by Poulter’s natural-feeling approach to the role.
