’23 Mile’ makes Michigan premiere at Freep Film Festival

A new film set in Michigan offers a kind of unvarnished look back at the political flashpoints that defined 2020, capturing a time many would rather forget and offering a reminder that the present moment in many ways lives in the shadow of that year.

“23 Mile” directed by Mitch McCabe makes its Michigan premiere at the Freep Film Festival on Saturday. It traverses the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Michigan, Black Lives Matter protests, a foiled plot to kidnap the governor, a presidential election in the battleground state followed by unprecedented efforts to subvert it. McCabe captures the raw anger that defined much of the year while showing some of the ideologically entrenched subjects the film features bemoaning a growing political divide in the U.S.

A chaotic scene outside a Warren polling location features a supporter of then-President Donald Trump standing atop the bed of a pickup truck calling the U.S. a Christian nation. “You have been lied to,” she says in response to objections from Joe Biden supporters, urging them to join her in singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

“We love you even though you don’t agree with us we still love you as a fellow American,” she says.

The film focuses on political polarization without interviewing any politicians, a deliberate choice by McCabe. “I’m really interested in the people not public figures who usually have a pretty good podium to speak from. Ultimately they represent us and I think that it’s the people who are constantly getting misrepresented,” they said.

Instead, the film features conversations with militia members, reporters and others such as a West Virginia woman with five kids who travels to Michigan for a Trump rally to sell COVID-19 masks featuring the campaign’s logo.

McCabe described their film as a kind of “political science document or art piece” that documents the ways Michigan defies some conventional political narratives with footage featuring candid conversations with residents throughout the state and near the Macomb County thoroughfare after which the film is named. “To me, it’s almost more than a location. It’s kind of a symbol of complicated politics,” McCabe said.

“It’s not like the film is about people trying to overthrow government per se. I think everybody is fairly unhappy, and if you had them around a dinner table they would be agreeing about a lot of stuff. And I think, hopefully that’s what people see in the film. So for me, it’s a pretty hopeful film, it’s just the systems that we live in don’t really bring out the best in us,” McCabe said.

McCabe uses footage of Lake St. Clair as a kind of transition to bookend each chapter of Michigan’s 2020 story. But far from a cool respite from a hot political climate, an otherwise tranquil waterfront transforms into yet another backdrop for grievance with audio from call-in radio shows.

Freep Film Festival lineup:20-plus feature-length documentaries from Michigan and beyond

The cacophony of dissenting opinions makes its way onto manicured front lawns when McCabe captures quiet residential streets the morning of the 2020 election showing Biden and Trump signs and flags on homes on the same block or sometimes right next door to one another.

At the start of “23 Mile” McCabe explains that they returned home to Michigan at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. “So the following is a political video diary,” reads white text over a black background to kick off the film. Over the course of 78 minutes, those watching might start to recall their own diary from that defining year.

“23 Mile” makes its Michigan premiere Saturday, April 13 at 2 p.m. at the Detroit Film Theatre at the DIA. Buy tickets at freepfilmfestival.com.

Contact Clara Hendrickson atchendrickson@freepress.com or 313-296-5743. Follow her on X, previously called Twitter,@clarajanehen.

Looking for more on Michigan’s elections this year? Check out ourvoter guide, subscribe to ourelections newsletter and always feel free to share your thoughts in aletter to the editor.