Executive produced by legendary Milwaukee Bucks champion Giannis Antetokounmpo, this short but robust documentary showcases the inner workings of the country’s largest American flag manufacturer, located in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, just south of Milwaukee. Eder Flag, originally launched in 1887 to produce pillows and hunting jackets, began to handcraft U.S. flags during the Great Depression, and now produces more than 5 million flags a year.
A diverse group of employees, many of them immigrants, make up the eclectic population of this employee-owned factory, all with different ideas of what America and its flag mean to them. As they work together to make each and every flag, the construction of these often-massive layers of stars and stripes presents like a microcosm of America itself: a true melting pot of refugees, immigrants and blue-collar workers, without whom the country would be unable to function.
Ali, who walks with a limp and has just arrived in the U.S. with his wife and children, couldn’t be happier to manufacture American flags, despite never having used a sewing machine before. To him the flag represents freedom, and reminds him of the stars he drew as a child in Iraq. The gratitude he feels to be in America is clear in nearly every scene he’s featured in, even one that addresses a violent incident at Walmart.
Barb, a lifelong Wisconsinite whose health is deteriorating, seems genuinely upset to retire, after spending most of her life working as a flag sewer and befriending much of the staff. She is so proud of the work they do that in one scene she picks up a flag that has been blown away from someone’s yard and puts it back in place.
SugarRay, a native Milwaukeean, has a more complicated view of the American flag, choosing not to have one at his home. “Definitely love this country,” SugarRay says in the film, several scenes after watching a local news channel reporting on the violence in Kenosha. “But it don’t always love you back.”
Radica, a Serbian immigrant and the sewing manager of Eder Flag, sums up the idea of the film in a nutshell while visiting the Statue of Liberty in New York City during the last scene. “I love America. I know it’s not perfect,” she says, looking up at the flag on Liberty Island, one of the millions she and her fellow employees made and distributed that year. “But that is beauty. You don’t love something because it’s perfect; you love it because it’s yours.”
Codirected by Oscar winner Cynthia Wade and Sharon Liese, this somewhat dismal but very relevant National Geographic documentary short chooses a unique setting to explore and addresses hardships and biases faced by the factory’s diverse population without making it the entire focus of the film.
The Flagmakers, Wednesday, December 21, Disney+