A verité portrait of ritual, identity, and the people who breathe life into small town America.
Synopsis
Set in the small farming community of Three Oaks, Michigan — home to the nation’s largest Flag Day parade — Flag Day is a verité portrait of ritual, identity, and belonging in an era of deep political division. Somewhere between tradition and transformation lies this village, whose annual parade has become a pageant of American aspiration and memory. Over the course of Flag Day weekend, the film immerses viewers in the lives of a diverse cross-section of townspeople: veterans, local business owners, marching bands, and volunteers who, for one weekend each June, create an event that is at once nostalgic and reflective of the tensions of our time. Their stories reveal both the beauty and the fragility of community life in a time of polarization. Flag Day was filmed in an observational, verité style, capturing moments of humor, conflict, and grace as the community prepares for its defining ritual. The film offers a ground-level portrait of civic life — a portrait that holds both the good and the hard truths of being American. The project asks what binds us together today and whether those bonds can still be renewed.
Directors’ Statement
Having grown up on opposite coasts — Andrew in New York City and Melissa in Southern California — a sense of small-town belonging has always felt elusive to us. But that shifted in 2013, when we stood on a sidewalk with our two young children in Three Oaks, Michigan, to watch the Flag Day parade. What began as a summer visit evolved into a decade of deep friendships within this community. These relationships became the catalyst for the film. We wanted to capture the heartbeat of a place that had given us a sense of home and belonging. In the months leading up the 2024 parade, we assembled a team of ace cinematographers and sound recordists from Chicago’s documentary community. We focused on a cross-section of key characters in the community and adopted a verité approach to filming the meticulous preparations, the parade itself, and the reflective aftermath. Our goal was to weave together these characters and their personal stories into a rich visual tapestry that would quietly reveal a deeper story about ritual, identity, and the people who breathe life into small-town America in this polarized time.
THE STORY OF FLAG DAY
Origins in Small-Town America
The history of Flag Day is as layered and unexpected as America itself. Though it became a national observance in 1916, the idea began much earlier—and in small towns far from Washington. One of the first recorded celebrations took place in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1861, when a local named Victor Morris urged his neighbors to mark the anniversary of the flag’s adoption with a day of remembrance.
In the years that followed, teachers and civic leaders helped the idea take root. In 1885, Wisconsin schoolteacher B.J. Cigrand led his students in what he called “Flag Birthday.” A few years later, George Balch, a kindergarten teacher in New York, introduced a similar observance that soon spread statewide.
A National Celebration
By the 1890s, parades and ceremonies were springing up across the country—from Philadelphia’s Independence Square to the Chicago schoolyard where 300,000 children gathered in 1894 to wave flags and sing patriotic songs. President Woodrow Wilson finally proclaimed June 14 as Flag Day in 1916, honoring the date the flag was adopted in 1777. Congress made it official in 1949, when President Harry Truman signed it into law.
Keeping the Tradition Alive
Since then, towns across America have made the celebration their own. Fairfield, Washington; Appleton, Wisconsin; and Qunicy, Massachusetts each claim the oldest continuous parade. And In Three Oaks, Michigan — where our documentary is set —the parade has grown from its humble beginnings in 1953 into the largest Flag Day celebration in the United States. For more than a century, communities like this have kept the ritual alive, reminding us that the story of the flag is really the story of the people who gather beneath it.