Mariana Fabian joins director Jeremy Seifert for the Mountainfilm Festival premiere of Paper Town, a film that follows a paper mill that defined Canton, North Carolina, announcing its sudden closure. Filmed in real time, its is a raw look at a town blindsided by corporate silence and suspicious profit. As shock turns to anger, the people of Canton must navigate the wreckage of an industry that shaped their past and now threatens their future.
Seifert is an award-winning film director, cinematographer and editor whose documentaries have premiered at Sundance, Berlinale, Hot Docs, Tribeca and AFI DOCS. He co-directed The Devil We Know, a 2018 Sundance documentary in competition and Netflix premiere. His short documentary The Church Forests of Ethiopia (Mountainfilm 2020) premiered with The New York Times Op-Docs, followed by Ark of the Apocalypse (Mountainfilm 2021), which explores certain interpretations of the Bible that foretell an apocalypse and what that means for our world today. Seifert also co-directed God’s Plant (Mountainfilm 2021) alongside Malek Asfeer. He is the co-director of Papertown and A Mystical Ornithology (both Mountainfilm 2026), alongside Benjamin James Roberts. His films GMO OMG and Dive! Living Off America’s Waste won over 30 awards at festivals around the world, and both debuted on Netflix.
Our goal from the beginning was to be present and to listen and to document this happening that will never happen again. It’s a story that’s repeated itself a thousand times over throughout the country — not just the closing of paper mills, but industry in general. I’ve done environmental films in the past where I’m sticking it to Monsanto or DuPont or something. But this film, for me, wasn’t about the environmental cost of a paper mill, even though there is one. The goal was to stay out of it as much as we could as a film team and let them not only tell their stories, but live their stories.
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Jeremy Seifert IMDb, Instagram, Website
Follow our interview host online:
Mariana Fabian
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Credits:
- Theme music: Eugene Rocco Utley & Karl Vincent
- Artwork: Danny Jarabek
- Editor: Danny Jarabek
- Assistant Producer: Evan Miller