Sundance 2025: Middletown (Dirs. Jesse Moss & Amanda McBaine) | Review
Middletown is an exhilarating portrait of young students forging their political consciousness in the face of a major public health scandal—while also serving as a love letter to investigative journalism.
“A landfill is where we dump our secrets, where we put our misdeeds and cover them up. We weren’t gonna let that happen,” says Fred Isseks—or “Crazy Fred,” as his fellow teachers and students affectionately called him in the 1990s. “Crazy,” perhaps, but resolutely determined to shake things up. In this case, that meant exposing a public health scandal in upstate New York, right in the vicinity of the high school where he taught, Middletown High School.
An unconventional educator, Fred designed an elective course like no other. Officially labeled “Electronic English,” it was a hands-on program where students were encouraged to use audiovisual media to create: eccentric music videos, offbeat horror shorts, and, eventually, something far more consequential. When Fred and his young, rebellious students stumbled upon whispers of an environmental and health crisis—a toxic contamination leaching through illegal dumping grounds—there was no turning back. Private interests had orchestrated a cover-up, with local political authorities and mainstream media turning a blind eye. That was all it took to get the students on board. With their cameras in hand, they set out to document, investigate, and expose. These budding investigative journalists hit the ground, meeting locals affected by the pollution and confronting the key stakeholders in a David-versus-Goliath battle.
Middletown, premiering in the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s “Premieres” section, sees directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine return, thirty years later, to the story of this tenacious group of students. Their mission was simple yet audacious: uncover the truth and make it impossible to ignore.
For the film, Fred Isseks and four of his former students sit down in front of the camera, their reflections tinged with nostalgia, clarity, and even a sense of wonder at their teenage selves. They recall not only their efforts to expose a major environmental scandal but also the formative power of this extraordinary class. The project was an awakening: a revelation of their own potential, a baptism by fire into investigative journalism, and a reckoning with the realities of corporate negligence and political complicity.
Fueled by the treasure trove of VHS tapes Fred preserved, Middletown unfolds as a film within a film. The documentary seamlessly integrates original footage shot and edited by the students, including their most ambitious work—a feature-length exposé titled Garbage, Gangsters and Greed. This archive isn’t just nostalgia; it’s evidence. These young documentarians weren’t just playing reporters; they were capturing the raw truth, assembling a case file that demanded reckoning.
As a work of storytelling, Middletown excels at layering its narrative. It deftly interweaves multiple threads: the electrifying group dynamic fostered by an unconventional teacher; the unfolding investigative thriller of the contaminated water scandal; the students’ evolution as they gain maturity, lose naiveté, and sharpen their skills in filmmaking, argumentation, and political consciousness; and finally, the retrospective voices of these former students, now adults, revisiting a turning point in their lives. The film is gripping, immersive, and refreshingly free from sensationalist shortcuts. It skillfully plays with these different timelines, structuring them in a way that remains both compelling and organic.
At the heart of it all is Fred Isseks, a figure as compelling as he is self-effacing. A self-proclaimed geek, he championed a “learning by doing” approach that defied traditional pedagogy. While his methods set him apart from his colleagues, what truly distinguished him was his unwavering belief in his students. He empowered them, trusted them, and led them into a real-world project with real-world stakes. Beyond exposing an environmental scandal, he gave them something even more valuable: a sense of agency, political and environmental awareness, and confidence in their own voices. Three decades later, it’s touching to see just how deeply this experience shaped them—though the film never leans too hard on sentimentality.
Middletown is, in many ways, a love letter—to investigative journalism, to the relentless pursuit of truth, to the power of documentary filmmaking. It celebrates the medium’s ability to capture reality, frame an argument, and give weight to discovery. These students were hardening, sharpening their critical thinking, challenging power. As Fred puts it, they were practicing “civic courage,” their guiding principle being the triumph of truth. Their defense of local working-class communities recalls, on a different scale, the dogged commitment of Mark Ruffalo’s character in Todd Haynes’ Dark Waters—except here, they weren’t lawyers. They were documentarians, wielding cameras instead of legal briefs. Their meticulous work enabled them to participate in public hearings, facing down officials with a composure and tenacity that, while on a different scale, echoed the same courage, perseverance, and sense of agency seen in today’s youth activists like Greta Thunberg. And through it all, Fred never sought the spotlight. He wasn’t there to dictate or take credit—he was there to equip, to facilitate, to inspire.
On a formal level, the film’s aesthetic choices are questionable. While the recreated classroom set, used for present-day interviews, is a clever touch, the decision to shoot these segments in anamorphic scope with a distinctly cinematic texture feels at odds with the grainy, intimate VHS footage at the film’s core. One wonders if this choice was meant to lend a fictional dimension to an already compelling true story. Instead, it mainly creates an odd visual dissonance.
The film’s final moments also veer slightly into reality-TV territory, leaning a bit too heavily on the emotional weight of reunions between former students and their classroom-turned-time-capsule. While this epilogue offers a poetic meditation on the spaces that shape us, it feels slightly manufactured compared to the rest of the film’s understated approach.
These are minor reservations in an otherwise masterfully crafted film. Middletown is a triumphant celebration of the documentary form, a love letter to the enduring relevance of investigative journalism, and a stirring reminder that wherever there are individuals driven by justice, there is hope. It is a film brimming with warmth despite its grave subject matter—a storytelling feat, a beacon of hope, a must-see.
The Film Fest Report team is an accredited media at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Expect substantial coverage from Park City, Utah, as the festival unfolds from January 23 to February 2, 2025.
