Union County: Two men try to stay sober. The system has other ideas.

Adam Meeks filmed inside Ohio's recovery courts, mixing actors with real people who actually appeared in those rooms. The result is a film about addiction that doesn't traffic in redemption. Recovery here is provisional, fragile—one day, then the next.

Will Poulter plays Cody, a man so exhausted by addiction that hope feels like a trick. The performance works through what's withheld—a hollowness at the center. Noah Centineo plays Jack differently, reaching toward a self worth maintaining. Elise Kibler anchors the judge's position, holding the weight of decisions that carry moral consequence while remaining bound by law.

Stefan Weinberger's camera shoots rural Ohio without softening. Grey buildings, grey weather, no visual romance. This is commitment to not aestheticizing pain. Celia Hollander's score stays quiet, letting silence do work. David Marks' editing trusts that transformation doesn't need punctuation.

The film doesn't show characters choosing life and walking into sunshine. Recovery doesn't work that way. Meeks structures his film around the actual mechanics of recovery courts—bureaucracy and hope tangled together. A judge's decision means something. So does showing up the next day.

What distinguishes this from sociology is its attention to interior life. Poulter and Centineo hold the weight of their own stories. The film refuses to make recovery inspiring. Instead it makes it real—the cost, the fragility, the way systemic forces work against change.

In rural Ohio, in rooms where people negotiate their own survival, Meeks finds the American story. Not in aspiration but in the daily refusal to accept that anyone is beyond possibility. This is a film that understands: hope doesn't require optimism. It only requires showing up.