Film closes festival with discussion on nation’s political divide

For documentarian Ben Rekhi, “The Reunited States” was not only about making a movie, but about making a difference.

For documentary filmmaker Ben Rekhi, “The Reunited States” was not only about making a movie, but about making a difference.

His movie, having its world premiere at the virtual Woods Hole Film Festival, is about bridge-building in a world of political divide, largely following four stories of people who are trying to change the dialogue at a time when the country is so polarized.

Among them: the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville; and David Leaverton, a man who worked in Republican politics before taking his family on an RV trip around the country and being transformed by what he saw and heard.

“We really created this (film) to try and give hope in a time when it’s so badly needed,” Rekhi said in a recent phone interview. He wants the film to be “an entry point for people and just … show them another way.”

While he’s disappointed the pandemic has forced the festival to be virtual, without gatherings of people to discuss the film, he said, “I don’t mind if people watch it on their phone if it can help them. … The end goal is to give a new lens and a sense of agency in a time of despair.”

With the film festival online, patrons can watch “The Reunited States” at home via a festival pass or a one-time ticket anytime through Saturday. It has, however, been designated as the closing-night film for Saturday because an online discussion is scheduled for 8 p.m.

That Q&A will include Rekhi and all of the main film subjects: Susan Bro, Heyer’s mother; Leaverton, founder and president of Undivided Nation, and wife Erin, who co-lauched that organization seeking unity in America; Steven Olikara, the son of Indian immigrants who founded the Millennial Action Project to build a coalition of bipartisan lawmakers; and Independent politician Greg Orman, who believes a third political party is needed to break the polarization.

In addition, at 1 p.m. Thursday, “The Reunited States” will be the only one of the festival’s 42 feature-length films and 144 shorts to get a “panel case study,” which will bring national figures in the bridge-building movement together to discuss how the documentary might be used as a learning and advocacy tool by different parties.

Participants will include Mark Gerzon, author of the 2016 book “The Reunited States of America” upon which the movie is loosely based; Joan Blades, co-founder of Living Room Conversations, an effort to “rebuild respectful discourse across ideological, cultural and party lines,” as well as MomsRising.org (working for a “family-friendly America”) and MoveOn.org (championing progressive values); Tru Pettigrew, known for the “Barbershop Raps” community-led initiative that invites white police officers into barbershops for conversations with the Black community; John Wood Jr., a national leader for Braver Angels, aimed at bringing liberals and conservatives together to depolarize America; and Pearce Godwin, founder and CEO of the Listen First Project dedicated to bridging divides.

Woods Hole festival co-founder and director Judy Laster is excited about who will be involved in both virtual discussions, joining in from around the country.

“Yes, we show films at the festival, but we also try to create a dialogue whenever possible,” she said. “This is an amazing opportunity.”

Rekhi is happy to have those discussions, too, after more than two years of making the movie. It took longer than planned in part because he decided to completely rework it this winter to focus more on the people’s stories rather than expert analysis of the country’s political troubles.

“We realized that if it kind of felt too academic, it was going to go over people’s heads,” he said. “We had to make it really visceral and emotional. You only change minds through people’s hearts, so if we didn’t speak to people’s hearts … it wasn’t going to work.”

Rekhi, an award-winning maker of fictional films and a PBS docuseries, believes he comes to the subject matter of his first documentary feature from a lifetime of experience.His father is an Indian immigrant, his mother an “East Coast American from Connecticut. She leans left, he leans right and so I think bridge-building was something that started early in me without me knowing it.”

Bro’s story and loss was where “The Reunited States” film began.

“After the 2016 election, like a lot of people, I was trying to navigate this new reality, see how the work I was doing could help us understand the new world we were living in,” Rekhi said. “I saw Susan Bro speak at a conference in D.C. Here’s someone who lost her daughter on the front lines of division and she’s able to talk about talking to the other side and having difficult conversations to avoid further violence. And it really struck me that someone who had suffered this immense tragedy could move past it and focus on healing.”

Seeing Bro triggered self-reflection, which is what he hopes his film will now do for others.Compared to Bro, “what were the rest of us doing?” he asked. “It felt so petty all of a sudden to be so emotional and worked up about politics when there was a voice of reason showing us there was another way.”

He told Bro he wanted to be part of telling her story. It took convincing, but the first scene of the “The Reunited States” — Bro at a commemoration of the first anniversary of her daughter’s death in August 2018 — was the first scene Rekhi filmed.

“I really just poured out my heart to her and she allowed me to follow her and get a glimpse into her life that no one has seen yet.”

Rekhi found the other film subjects through Gerzon. After the “Reunited States” title came into Rekhi’s head, he Googled it and realized Gerzon had already used it. “The Reunited States of America” book profiled 40 bridge-builders in the political divide. Since Gerzon had started speaking about his book, Rekhi said, he had become the “godfather” of sorts of the movement and multiple new people had come to his attention — including the three stories besides Bro that Rekhi ended up focusing on for the documentary.

“It was like it was meant to be,” Rekhi said of working with Gerzon.

As the filmmaking went on, and through the re-editing earlier this year, Rekhi realized that the Leavertons, though, became “kind of the heartbeat of the film.”

“They went from being very insular in their bubble to going into Black communities and Native reservations and border towns and (they) really realized that ‘being an American’ for one person is not the same as (what) ‘being an American’ (means) for someone else,” he says. “Their journey of transformation I feel is indicative of one that we all are going through, (we’re) on different sorts of legs of the journey, so there’s something powerful and self-identifying about watching that transformation.”

The film was already timely in an election year — and Rekhi hopes the film will get wide release before November. But the depth of the divide shown by reactions to the pandemic and the protests after the death of George Floyd have made the film even more relevant, he believes, in what he considers the most challenging moment in history in a generation.

“All of a sudden, these divisions are on full display.” he said. “This is an opportunity to rise to the occasion and show our true selves. Only in times of great adversity do you learn and grow and we’re definitely being tested. … I feel more hopeful that we will come out the other side of this stronger for it, but it might be painful in the meantime.”

The “connective tissue” to the stories he chose to tell, Rekhi said, is that “this isn’t a film about fixing government. This is about fixing ourselves. … All of us, all of the citizens of this country are either part of the problem or part of the solution when it comes to polarization.”

He hopes his film turns helps viewers to realize that their daily thoughts and actions — including social-media posting — matter, and also realize that they have a choice to make a difference when they feel “helpless and hopeless.”

“Elected officials and our news stories only have as much power as we let them take over us,” he said. “So for me, (the film is) a call to action and a manifesto of sorts that here’s a completely different lens to look at this division through.”

The film can be seen this week by Woods Hole festival patrons, and it will be part of virtual film festivals in upcoming weeks in California, Tennessee, Montana and Washington. While Rekhi is talking to major film distributors, if “The Reunited States” doesn’t get a wider release before November, that would be OK, he said, because the election won’t be the solution.

“This is not limited to any specific event or time. These are longstanding issues this country is facing,” he said. “So after an election would be a great time for healing and grieving and coming together as well. I’ll leave it to the universe to tell us when the time is right.”

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