By one estimate, more than 550,000 people have lost their lives to the opioid epidemic over the first quarter of the 21st century.
That number doubles or even triples when it includes those who’ve fallen prey to opioid addiction and managed to survive. Add family, friends, and kin, and the number grows exponentially.
In the end, the human toll might be incalculable, but the Sackler family, the founders of Purdue Pharma and OxyContin, have paid settlements totaling at least $7B. Unsurprisingly, the Sacklers remain one of the wealthiest families in the United States, their reputations partially laundered via funds deposited into addiction programs, often, if not primarily, in rural states, counties, and localities like the devastated community depicted in writer-director Adam Meeks’ sensitive, affecting feature-length debut, Union County.
Expanded from the Ohio-born, NYU-trained Meeks’s 2020 short, Union County centers on Cody Parsons (producer-actor Will Poulter, delivering a career-redefining performance), a homeless, jobless twenty-something opioid addict. Brought in front of the county’s Adult Recovery Court, the introverted, anguished Cody shares minimal details about himself with the court's sympathetic judge (Kevin P. Craig) and the social worker, Annette (Annette Deao), who oversees the non-custodial program for recovering addicts.
While Cody agrees to the parameters of the program (e.g., regular drug testing, journal writing, group meetings), he’s far from the road to recovery. Instead, he’s still lost somewhere on an adjacent byway or highway, the “right” road in sight, but, at least for the moment, inaccessible. It doesn’t help that Cody’s foster brother, Jack (Noah Centineo, unrecognizable in long, unruly hair and an unkempt beard), joined the same program weeks earlier.
Bonded by similar life experiences and, more importantly, their substance addiction, Cody and Jack should be anywhere except in proximity to each other. The more time they spend together, the more likely they are to slip into the habits and proclivities that led to addiction. A live-wire in contrast to Cody’s reserved, monosyllabic personality, Jack has “bad influence” spelled out in big, bold letters the moment he re-enters Cody’s life.
It’s not as simple as it appears, however, as a late-film conversation between Cody and his sister, Katrina (Emily Meade), reveals Cody's partial responsibility for Jack's descent into addiction. Long tolerant of Cody’s misbehavior, Katrina calls the police after a post-bender Cody enters her home without permission and crashes on her couch. Katrina holds a tremendous amount of anger toward Cody, and not just because of the chances he’s repeatedly wasted on his long, deep dive into uncontrollable addiction.
Adhering to a straightforward dramatic formula, albeit one concerned more with internal conflicts than external ones, Union County follows Cody through several days, weeks, and months as he struggles with his addiction, attempts to hold a job at a local lumber mill, and tentatively pursues Anna (Elise Kibler), a young woman on the other side of addiction.
Meeks imbues Anna with a welcome nuanced complexity. Anna naturally gravitates toward Cody even as she tries to pull away, fearful of being pulled into the life of addiction she’s left behind and risking custody of her daughter. Similarly, Cody’s halting attempts at rehabilitation, no matter how successful, might not be enough to repair his relationship with his sister. Meeks recognizes that some relationships, whether created by biology or kinship, might be irrevocably broken.
Shot on location in rural Ohio, Union County mixes professional actors (Poulter, Centineo, others) with non-professional actors, the latter including recovering addicts sharing their stories, sometimes in court, sometimes in the group sessions where a still reticent (fictional) Cody listens attentively, quietly comparing and contrasting his own experiences with theirs. They’re Union County’s most powerful, most powerfully moving scenes, born not out of a filmmaker’s imagination, but the lived experiences of the people sharing their stories with the in-film audience surrogate, Cody, and, by extension, the audience on the other side of the screen.
Union County premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.