On Flag Day for INRO: Nestled in the rural midwestern town of Three Oaks, Michigan, the largest flag day parade in the nation is a surreal scene of unabashed Americana, radiating with irony, sincerity, and, most tangibly, the aesthetics of neoconservatism. Co-directors Melissa and Andrew Shea capture the event for their latest film, Flag Day (2026), which they describe as a verité-style documentary. And while their filmmaking somewhat reflects this observational mode, verité is historically rooted in a tradition of exposition and critique. In the United States, this fly-on-the-wall documentary genre was largely popularized by the late Frederick Wiseman, whose extensive filmography was dedicated to interrogating the nation’s most coveted and longstanding institutions. Of course, in this vein, a flag day ceremony is a golden opportunity to parse through what it means to fetishize a divisive America and its polarizing symbolism, which has come to represent far more than its most superficial qualifiers of supposed freedom and unity. Yet instead, Flag Day approaches the event at sheer face value, only fortifying, rather than interrogating, a blind faith in patriotism.Full Article on In Review Online
