An American Pastoral

An American Pastoral patiently and precisely documents mounting tensions in a rural Pennsylvania community over the future of public education, where a fierce debate about books masks a deeper crisis: the fate of American secular democracy. In 2023, in the conservative town of Elizabethtown, a full-blown ideological and cultural battle is underway over the school curriculum. With school board elections looming, fundamentalist candidates launch an aggressive campaign across the seemingly idyllic neighborhoods. White supremacists, conspiracy theorists, and Christian nationalists are rapidly ascending to leadership roles within the local Republican Party. Democrats fear – with good reason – that this will lead to bans on “sexually explicit” literature and the marginalization of LGBTQ+ youth. Edler’s camera is present during the months-long campaign, quietly observing the vitriolic, often violent debates unfolding at board meetings, in the streets, and in churches, between two opposing worldviews. As in Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, the American pastoral dream is unmasked as American berserk: school board meetings become toxic theaters of MAGA Christian extremism and the corresponding theocratic vision, while the students whose futures are at stake drift silently through school hallways and yellow buses, with no say in the matter. With calm observational precision in the tradition of Frederick Wiseman, Edler’s dystopian chronicle demonstrates – on a micro level – how the radical right, empowered by a warped theology of hatred, threatens to overthrow human rights and impose the Bible as the only legitimate Constitution. The danger has never felt more real, nor the nightmare more tangible. (Dina Pokrajac)

Awards and Festivals:
IDFA (2024) – Best Directing Award; Hong Kong International Film Festival (2025); Docville (2025)