In the summer of 2023, my friend Simon and I took a road trip across the United States. After leaving Washington D.C. for North Carolina, we made a brief detour to Grandview State Park in southern West Virginia. Taking a less-traveled route, we drove through McDowell County, located at the very southern tip of the “Mountain State.”

McDowell County is a place few people know. It rarely makes headlines, and when it does, it’s usually for negative reasons. Many online videos seem to exploit the struggles of the people who call McDowell County home. Such coverage is not only insensitive but also incomplete.

Since the collapse of the coal industry in the 1960s, the area has experienced severe outmigration. This trend continues today, though at a slower pace. In recent decades, repeated flooding and an opioid addiction epidemic have compounded the hardships caused by job losses and demographic shifts. Yet, people still live here, keeping this place that once gave so much to the country alive. And their stories deserve to be told.

My first visit to McDowell County was brief, and the only footage for this spontaneous piece was filmed on a phone without professional equipment. Still, the impressions I gathered left a lasting impact. Back home in Germany, I conducted additional research and remote interviews with McDowell natives to enrich the narrative. This short documentary is an attempt to understand, from an outsider’s perspective, what happened to one of America’s formerly leading coal-producing counties.

This was my first long-form documentary. While I have learned a lot since, it marked the beginning of my storytelling journey. I returned to McDowell County in 2024 and 2025 to produce Those Who Stayed, an ethnographic documentary focused on the residents’ projects and visions for a better future.