FILM · 2026 · USA
Union County
23 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
23 Interesting Facts About Union County
Interesting Facts (13)
- #001
Everyone attending the drug court sessions could stand and raise a hand on any given day if they didn't want to be filmed, and the crew made it clear that agreeing one week meant no obligation the next.
- #002
The prison sergeant who walks Cody out of his cell is the facility's real sergeant, who also advised the team on what an actual inmate would be allowed to keep in his cell to sleep with.
- #003
A story that shaped the film's whole emotional core came from a real drug court participant: he told Meeks that when his stepbrother died, he called his counselor Annette Deao at 11:00 p.m. while walking to a dealer's house, and she picked up and talked him back before he relapsed.
- #004
Annette Deao, who plays a version of herself, had trained as an actor for four years before she started running the drug court program, something she never mentioned to Meeks until he filmed her for the earlier short and praised her performance.
- #005
The camera knocked off its mount in the crash actually made the final cut better: in the edit, the team found that the camera flying forward gave the collision extra energy and physicality, yielding four powerful frames they used in the film.
- #006
To get the non-professional court participants used to being filmed, the team shot the Monday sessions with three or four cameras for a month before principal photography, before Will Poulter and Noah Centineo arrived, so everyone could get comfortable.
- #007
The film blends fiction and documentary by putting two cameras in the real drug court's Monday sessions and giving no instructions to anyone in the courtroom, letting everyone simply do their jobs.
- #008
A key detail about drug-use rituals, that a user might hide a needle in an M&M Minis tube and use the bottom of a soda can instead of a spoon to avoid detection at traffic stops, came straight from Carrie, a woman in recovery who shared her own rituals with Meeks as a production consultant.
- #009
Cody Parsons isn't based on a single person but is a composite of several real people Meeks knew in the recovery community.
- #010
Noah Centineo arrived two to three weeks before shooting, and he and Poulter lived across from each other during prep, driving around in a rental car listening to rap to build the brotherly bond seen on screen.
- #011
Director Adam Meeks spent more than seven years developing and making "Union County," from a 2017 trip to Ohio to the film's Sundance premiere in 2026.
- #012
Part of the film was shot in Bellefontaine, Ohio, a town with a French name that locals pronounce "Bell Fountain," part of a wider regional habit of giving French place names American pronunciations.
- #013
Poulter and Centineo both reached out to Meeks through their reps in the same week; Centineo met with him first, and Poulter's team a few days later.
Production Story (1)
- #014
Will Poulter arrived in Ohio a full month before shooting, unusual commitment for a star on a film of this budget, because he wanted to become part of the community.
Behind the Scenes (5)
- #015
The car crash in "Union County" was shot with an unmanned camera mounted on the back of the car, with stunt drivers really driving down a hill, speeding up and hitting a tree; there was only one take to get it before the light went.
- #016
Poulter stayed in character and kept his Ohio accent through each shooting day, arriving on set in character every morning and holding it through lunch, though at the end of the day he dropped it the moment Meeks called cut.
- #017
When the car hit the tree in that single take, the camera blew off its mount and flew forward, and every monitor in the follow vehicle went black; for five to ten minutes, nobody knew whether they'd got the shot.
- #018
The whole relapse sequence leading up to the crash had to be shot in one continuous stretch between 5:00 p.m. and the last of the daylight, making it the toughest day of the shoot.
- #019
The three-way intersection right in front of Meeks's uncle's house appears twice as a recurring shot; it was picked because cinematographer Stefan Weinberger kept coming back to it on early scouting trips years before production.
Characters & Cast (2)
- #020
Months before shooting, both leads went to Ohio with Meeks for a five-day winter trip, sitting in on drug court sessions, going to NA meetings and having dinner with the judge who appears in the film.
- #021
Poulter and Centineo already had a real older-brother/younger-brother dynamic before "Union County" began: they had just finished shooting A24's war film "Warfare" together, which, in director Adam Meeks's words, had made them feel like brothers: "perfect."
Deeper Meaning (2)
- #022
Meeks deliberately set the film in spring and summer to capture rural Ohio's lush green landscape, consciously pushing back against the usual screen image of the Midwest as a bleak, barren stretch of cornstalks.
- #023
The short "Union County" premiered at the 70th Berlinale in 2020, ahead of the feature, which grew out of nearly a decade of work in the same community.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
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