Flag Day

Flag Day is a 75-minute observational verité documentary directed by husband-and-wife filmmakers Andrew and Melissa Shea, set in Three Oaks, Michigan — a small farming community that has hosted what it calls the nation's largest Flag Day parade every summer since 1953. The film was shot across January through June 2024, capturing the months of preparation leading up to that year's parade as well as the event itself, with eleven crews (mostly from Chicago) embedded throughout the community.

The documentary profiles a cross-section of townspeople whose lives orbit the annual celebration. Among the central figures are Dyane Thomas, the parade coordinator, and her daughter Mya, who serves as Miss Three Oaks 2024; Lyn Isbell, the drumline director; a drumline from nearby Michigan City, Indiana; Jason Long, a Black Republican running for county sheriff; and various veterans, farmers, local business owners, and volunteers who give the parade its shape year after year. The parade itself has grown from roughly 20 marching units at its 1953 founding to more than 100 by 2024.

The film observes the community through preparations, rehearsals, and the parade weekend without editorial narration, letting interactions unfold as they happen. A notable scene captured is a woman wearing a Confederate flag jacket who crosses paths with Jason Long — footage the directors chose to include rather than omit as a candid representation of the tensions present beneath the pageantry. Because filming took place during a presidential election year in a swing state, the political atmosphere of the country layers itself onto the community's rituals.

Thematically, the film frames the parade as a contested but resilient act of collective identity: a community that, for one June weekend, transforms nostalgia and tradition into something that can hold people with deeply different worldviews in the same space. The directors' stated intent was to listen closely to what binds the community together and to ask honestly whether those bonds can still be renewed in an era of polarization. The film does not offer conclusions so much as it accumulates moments of humor, conflict, and grace. A community screening in October 2024 drew laughter and tears from local attendees. The theatrical release is timed to coincide with Flag Day weekend (June 14).

Sources: Detroit News, Yahoo Entertainment, FirstShowing.net, The Epoch Times, IMDb, The Film Collaborative, The Playlist