In late 2021, Barry Levinson and Robert May knew that they wanted to make a documentary about America’s deep political divide. After listening to an episode of the New York Times podcast “The Daily,” which focused on school board wars in Bucks County, Pa., the directing duo decided to visit the once-idyllic swing county located in the country’s largest swing state. There, they found plenty of political discord as well as two 14-year-olds — Evi and Vanessa — who are best friends despite their opposing political beliefs.
The teenagers would eventually become the main subjects of Levinson and May’s five-part docuseries “Bucks County, USA,” which explores whether a community can follow Evi and Vanessa’s abilities to find humanity in “the other side.”
The first two episodes of the series will screen on Jan. 28 at the Sundance Film Festival.
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According to both filmmakers, the docuseries is an unbiased, impartial human exploration of a painfully divided community. The directors made a point not to editorialize either side.
“This is not [a series] about heroes and villains,’” says Levinson. “It’s about what happened. Why this is such a conflict, and why it’s become so difficult that rational people can’t come to some kind of a consensus.”
Variety spoke to Levinson and May about “Bucks County, USA” ahead of the series’ Sundance premiere.
How did you decide to focus the series around two teenagers?
May: We started out talking to adults because adults are the ones that can’t get along. We were focusing on school boards because so much of the vitriol was coming out of these school board meetings and then would spill over into the community. But we realized the adults were all fighting over their children, so eventually, we thought we should consider talking to kids.
Evi and Vanessa’s parents, who participated in the series, don’t get along due to their opposing political beliefs. How did you convince them to let you film their children for the last three years?
May: At first, Vanessa’s dad was not interested in involving anybody but himself because he was acting as the family’s spokesperson. Eventually, both parents agreed to allow their two children to be in the film. The thing about both of those families is that they are already ahead of the curve, and they don’t even know it because they are allowing their kids to be best friends. They were parenting as if they were friendly families, yet the parents absolutely did not get along. But that didn’t stop their kids from having their friendship, and they didn’t stop their kids from being a part of the project either, which I think is pretty remarkable.
You started filming in 2022. When did the production conclude?
May: We still have a number of production days. The rest of the series is still under construction. It will be done in the spring.
Barry, you have made a few other documentaries. What drew you to this one?
Levinson: When I was growing up, my first cousin lived a block away from me. We were very close, almost like brothers. When Kennedy was running against Nixon, [my cousin] was in support of Nixon. I was in favor of Kennedy, but that did not affect anything. It wasn’t suddenly a conflict that somehow pulled us apart. When you apply it to this [film] in a way, obviously, it’s different [circumstances], but there are elements of it that are the same. Why is it that we now we can’t have different points of view without becoming enemies?. … With this series, we wanted to explore that issue without trying to take any side. We are just trying to show how a one-time tight-knit community can become at odds with itself. We are not trying to paint any picture other than this is what happened, and this is where it’s going.
Plenty of drama happens during the first two episodes of the series. Did you ever consider turning the story into a narrative?
Levinson: The documentary format seemed the best way to address this story. If you are doing a narrative, you are slanting something in one way or another because you are creating drama as opposed to this [series], which is showing behavior and how people deal with one another. So it never occurred to me to make this a feature. It was more of an exploration.
Robert, you called Sundance director Eugene Hernandez last summer to discuss the series. What was that conversation about?
May: We thought collectively that Sundance would be a perfect place for this project because [the festival] tends to [attract] a more liberal audience, but we thought this might be a great opportunity for folks to see and hear people that they may not normally hear from. But we didn’t think we could make the Sundance deadline. I decided to call Eugene anyway and say, ‘Hey, we have this project. It might be a feature. It could be a series. We really don’t know.” He was very intrigued that we were telling the story from both sides without editorializing. So the story to Eugene sounded good, but he had to see it.
You are looking for distribution for the series. Did you look for a deal before Sundance?
May: If this project were set out to be sold prior to anybody seeing it, we figured people were just going to say, “Oh, no. We don’t want a political documentary. It’s not the right time.” We felt like it wouldn’t sell based on us talking about it. Our strategy was to get a couple of episodes done and then lead by what we’ve created. I’m glad we did that because we internally do not see this as a political documentary at all. We feel that this is a story about humanity and the way that we look at someone who has a different point of view from our own.