Slamdance ’26: “The Bulldogs” Paints a Haunting Picture of a Town in Environmental Crisis
The opening image of Ori Segev and Noah Dixon’s Slamdance-premiering The Bulldogs is staggering. There’s a man wading through a shallow stream. The colors of the image are lush and beautiful. This opening image captures the natural beauty of the Appalachian region, but it’s only after spending another moment looking at the man in the frame that the viewer realizes something is off. He’s standing in this picturesque natural landscape and he’s wearing the type of gas mask you would see in the Vietnam War era.
This man, we later learn, is Dr. Rick Tsai, and he is a 30+-year resident of East Palestine, Ohio. It’s a small town of about 5,000 that likely wasn’t on most people’s radar until the devastating Norfolk Southern train derailment on February 3, 2023. A little before 9:00 that night, 38 cars of a freight train derailed in this sleepy town halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Residents were forced to evacuate before 1.1 million pounds of vinyl chloride were deliberately burned. Two days after the crash, residents were told it was safe to move back. The Bulldogs cameras arrived in the town six months after the crash, where plenty of residents are still skeptical that their beloved town is safe.
The Bulldogs is a nicely edited mix of verité filmmaking and traditional, structured interviews. Dixon and Segev turn their lenses on the folks who decided to stay. There are people like Dr. Tsai, who runs a chiropractor business in town and spends his time documenting the state of wildlife there. He feels so disillusioned by the treatment of the town by then-President Joe Biden that he launches his own congressional campaign. The Bulldogs also spends time with a high school senior and junior, a hairstylist, a pizza shop owner, and a few other neighbors to get a broad look at the various ways people have handled this environmental crisis.
One of the film’s subjects mentions that part of the appeal of a small town is its routine. In the stillness of life there and how it rewires a person’s brain to expect big things to happen elsewhere. How many times have we heard something along the lines of “nothing happens here” in a documentary of some earth-shattering event? The Bulldogs shows the after-effects of such an event, when the news cameras have gone and the media has moved on. While not its main focus, the documentary does a nice job of highlighting the way these national news outlets covered the derailment as though East Palestine residents were pathetic, helpless people. It’s a generalization of Appalachians often made in the media, but one that’s easily refutable should someone choose to spend time in the area. There’s a lot of pride on display here related to the belief that East Palestine can take care itself that can cloud the potential long-term implications of this derailment.
Courtesy of Drew Johnson and Alexander Hyde
Many of the people who are interviewed for this documentary have a mentality that’s focused on survival. It’s common in this coal mining region that’s oft-forgotten by the rest of the world. There’s a line, however, between putting in the work to ensure survival and living through events caused by corporate greed, malpractice, or what have you, that make survival impossible. Is the city of East Palestine safe for the people who live there? It’s hard to trust the official government response when Dr. Tsai will poke at something in the river and produce unnatural bubbles in the water. The Bulldogs is not an attempt to be an exposé of a large-scale government cover-up, but recognizes the value in the perspective that comes from people who lived through it.
If one were to remove the subject matter of The Bulldogs and just look at it in a purely visual way, it’s a lush, textured piece of work. Dixon and Segev are both from Ohio, and the care that comes from wanting to truthfully showcase their state is admirable. They’ve noticed the small quirks that make East Palestine a place many love calling home. In The Bulldogs, Dixon and Segev constructed an engrossingly intimate introduction to a town, its people, and the terrible event that looms over them all.
Catch The Bulldogs at Slamdance! Visit the Slamdance website for tickets and screening information.
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