True/False 2025: Middletown is the latest story of youthful empowerment from the filmmakers behind Boys State and Girls State

Missouri-based film festival True/False is running currently, and this is one of the many reviews about new, innovative documentary & documentary-adjacent movies premiering in Columbia, MO. Read more here. 

Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine are slowly building a filmography of open-hearted documentaries about young people and civic engagement. Over the course of their last few films — which include Boys State, Girls State and The Mission — the filmmaking duo have become delightfully preoccupied with stories of young adults discovering their voices, and the systems that threaten to limit or manipulate those voices. Their latest documentary, Middletown, about a group of Gen-X high school students collaborating with their teacher on a years-long investigative report, is no different. It may also be their most clear-eyed and empowering movie yet.

In the early 90s, high school English teacher Fred Isseks started teaching an elective class called Electronic English at Middletown High School in Middletown, New York. Students in the class learned the basics of filmmaking and broadcast journalism, and the classroom became a haven for kids who didn’t fit in elsewhere academically. The coursework moved from experimentation to investigative journalism after Isseks learned from a friend about groundwater pollution coming from a local landfill. What followed were several years of reports, investigative research and classroom visits as the students uncovered a conspiracy that posed a major environmental threat to their community.

McBaine and Moss are as interested in Isseks and the welcoming atmosphere he created as they are in the details of the story itself. Middletown alternates between archival footage of the students and their work and interviews with a few of the story’s now-grown major players, filmed in a recreation of the classroom where they spent so much of their time. What emerges is an encouraging story about the potential of young people to take impactful action in their communities, and what it takes to foster that kind of engagement.

The students in Isseks’ Electronic English course are a classic cross-section of ragtag 90s teens. Rachel Raimist is a confident goth girl with a poster of David Lynch on her bedroom wall. Jeff Dutemple is a self-described “poser” who goofs off on camera and tries to get along with everyone. ROTC kid David Birmingham found himself hanging out in Isseks’ TV studio/classroom and liked figuring out how stuff worked.

All of them found in Isseks a mentor who encouraged them to be themselves and provided a productive space to direct their energy. Moss and McBaine show the kids making amateur films and hanging out together against a backdrop of 90s needle drops that would be right at home in an episode of Yellowjackets — Veruca Salt’s Seether, Snow’s Informer, Guided By Voices’ I am a Scientist.

The story the students uncover is an inherently cinematic conspiracy of the “you can’t make this up” variety, involving mob-run waste disposal services, regional government corruption, illegally dumped body parts and literal toxic waste. Over time, we watch as the kids evolve from telling jokes to becoming serious-minded journalists. They ask informed questions of government officials at town hall meetings. They invite the editor-in-chief of the local paper into their classroom to grill him on the news’ failure to adequately cover the corruption and environmental dangers they’ve discovered on their own.

It would be plenty interesting if all Middletown did was tell the story of these kids and their teacher stumbling on to a major scoop. But more importantly, Moss and McBaine are interested in how Isseks helped his students develop their awareness and skills. That interest is ultimately what turns Middletown from an inspiring story to a blueprint for educators and mentors who want to inspire the young adults in their lives to ask questions and speak truth to power.

We’re going to need Fred Isseks-level of care for the world and respect for the next generation of leaders if we’re going to survive our current political climate, to say nothing of the current government spending cuts and threats to public education. Middletown is a reminder of what’s possible when people who’ve been told their voices don’t matter are given the resources to change that narrative. It’s also a reminder of what’s at stake when those resources are taken away.