Class Wars

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Class Wars teaser

Synopsis

Class Wars is a feature documentary told by a former public-school history teacher who picks up a camera after becoming the target of a coordinated political attack. What starts as a local scandal becomes a globe-spanning investigation into a slow-motion coup of public education—where nationalists, oligarchs, and corrupt politicians converge with tech firms to dismantle schools, rewrite history, and privatize democracy itself.

Moving from teacher testimonies and school

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Class Wars is a feature documentary told by a former public-school history teacher who picks up a camera after becoming the target of a coordinated political attack. What starts as a local scandal becomes a globe-spanning investigation into a slow-motion coup of public education—where nationalists, oligarchs, and corrupt politicians converge with tech firms to dismantle schools, rewrite history, and privatize democracy itself.

Moving from teacher testimonies and school board showdowns in the U.S. to post-fascist memory sites in Germany, the film reveals a single playbook operating across borders: manufacture moral panic, scapegoat educators and queer/trans youth, gut public institutions, and replace human teaching with outsourced curriculum, surveillance platforms, and AI-driven “solutions.” Along the way, Class Wars uncovers a pandemic-era international network pushing homeschooling and deregulated ed-tech as the endgame of “choice.”

Blending verité, sit-down interviews, dark comedic interludes, and an Adam Curtis–style archival barrage, the film connects personal consequence to systemic design—then asks the urgent question: what does a democracy become when it no longer believes in public education? And what can be done to challenge it?

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Background

Public education has become one of the most visible battlegrounds in the global struggle over democracy. Across the U.S. and internationally, schools are where fights over history, identity, labor power, technology, and state authority are playing out in real time. What appears to be a local culture war is in fact a scalable political strategy: destabilize trust in public institutions, manufacture moral panic, privatize the wreckage, and rebuild in the autocratic's

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Public education has become one of the most visible battlegrounds in the global struggle over democracy. Across the U.S. and internationally, schools are where fights over history, identity, labor power, technology, and state authority are playing out in real time. What appears to be a local culture war is in fact a scalable political strategy: destabilize trust in public institutions, manufacture moral panic, privatize the wreckage, and rebuild in the autocratic's image. Class Wars investigates that strategy at the moment it is accelerating.

The film is urgent for three converging reasons. First, authoritarian movements are using education as a proving ground—targeting teachers, censoring curriculum, and capturing school boards to reshape civic memory. Second, AI and surveillance technologies are rapidly entering classrooms, transforming pedagogy, assessment, and labor conditions with limited public oversight. Third, privatization networks are expanding voucher systems, charter pipelines, and deregulated homeschooling infrastructures that redirect public funds into private systems. Education is the foundation for democracy. And that foundation is being systemically dismantled.

Audience demand for politically charged, cinematic nonfiction is proven. Our editor/producer Kurt Engfehr brilliantly worked with Michael Moore to craft Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, taking in over $300 million proving that personality-driven political documentaries can achieve major theatrical impact and global box office scale. More recently, formally ambitious international works confronting authoritarianism, such as the Oscar-nominated Mr. Nobody Against Putin, show that audiences and awards bodies continue to respond to urgent, artistically distinctive political storytelling. Contemporary appetite for youth-centered social analysis—seen in the popularity of projects like Adolescence further underscores the market: audiences are asking how young people become alienated, polarized, or radicalized.

The target audience is both concentrated and expansive. In the U.S., public schools serve nearly 50 million students across roughly 30–35 million households—representing tens of millions of parents and guardians—alongside 3.8 million public school teachers embedded in strong institutional networks. Secondary audiences include viewers of investigative political documentaries, tech accountability stories, and films about democratic backsliding—proven, mobilizable constituencies. The director, after all, was a teacher of gen Z and interfaced with the core audience for a decade.

Internationally, Class Wars is structured to travel. The German strand anchors the film within Europe’s historical and political landscape, strengthening its positioning for EU broadcasters, co-production markets, and major festivals. The film also highlights Scotland as a key analytical lens, featuring leading researchers in education, labor, and technology from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow. Their analysis situates AI adoption, labor restructuring, and public-sector reform within a global political economy framework, expanding the narrative beyond an American culture war into a systemic international story. This integration of U.S. frontline reporting, German historical memory, and Scottish academic insight increases relevance across the UK, Europe, and other democracies confronting similar pressures.

From a revenue perspective, the project is built for multiple lanes: premiere-driven festival launch; streamer or premium broadcast acquisition; international sales; and durable educational and institutional licensing across universities, libraries, unions, and NGOs. For industry partners and investors, the opportunity is clear: a timely, internationally resonant political feature with built-in constituencies, strong festival and awards potential, diversified revenue pathways, and subject matter at the center of the political cycle. Class Wars arrives not as retrospective analysis, but as a present-tense intervention.

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Style & Tone

Class Wars is designed to make audiences feel destabilized, implicated, and ultimately galvanized. The emotional arc moves from recognition (“I’ve seen this happening”) to revelation (“This is coordinated and structural”) to urgency (“This affects the future of democracy”) and finally to agency. The goal is not despair, but clarity. By the end of the film, audiences should feel that they understand the system—and that understanding carries

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Class Wars is designed to make audiences feel destabilized, implicated, and ultimately galvanized. The emotional arc moves from recognition (“I’ve seen this happening”) to revelation (“This is coordinated and structural”) to urgency (“This affects the future of democracy”) and finally to agency. The goal is not despair, but clarity. By the end of the film, audiences should feel that they understand the system—and that understanding carries responsibility.

The tone is urgent, investigative, and cinematic rather than academic. While the subject matter is political, the storytelling is character-driven and emotionally grounded. The film begins with lived experience—teachers under pressure, school board confrontations, classrooms reshaped by digital mandates—before widening into systemic analysis. This structure ensures the audience feels the stakes before encountering the architecture of power behind them.

Formally, the film blends three visual languages:

1. Verité Immersion
Handheld, observational footage places viewers inside school board meetings, classrooms, protests, and interviews in motion. The camera stays close to faces, capturing micro-reactions and tension in real time. Natural light and restrained grading preserve authenticity. This strand builds intimacy and credibility.

2. Investigative Interviews
Sit-down interviews with educators, historians, technologists, labor scholars, and policy experts are framed with precision—composed, deliberate, and visually confident. In Scotland, leading researchers from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow provide analytical depth; in Germany, historians and educators contextualize post-fascist reforms. Interviews are not static exposition—they are punctuated with archival overlays, documents, and dynamic editorial movement that keeps intellectual material visually active.

3. Archival Montage as "Painting with history"
Inspired by the scale and propulsion of filmmakers like Adam Curtis and Mark Cousins, combined with more character-anchored throughline, the archival sequences function as evidence within the atmosphere. Graphics, archival, music, and animation are carefully Art Directed to maintain tone.

The aesthetic contrasts human warmth with institutional coldness. Classrooms are textured and alive; tech interfaces and bureaucratic spaces are stark and geometric. AI-driven education tools are filmed in controlled, almost clinical compositions to evoke both seduction and unease. The score builds momentum—subtle electronic textures layered beneath verité, escalating into percussive propulsion during investigative reveals.

Tonally, the film avoids didacticism. There is room for dark irony and restrained humor—moments of absurdity in public hearings or political rhetoric—echoing the accessibility of Michael Moore’s work without adopting overt performative confrontation. The narrator’s presence (rooted in lived experience) provides continuity and stakes without overpowering the broader investigation.

Ultimately, the visual language reinforces the thesis: this is not chaos; it is design. By juxtaposing personal stories with structural patterns across the U.S., Germany, and Scotland, the film cultivates a sense of recognition that transcends national boundaries. The audience should leave feeling unsettled but empowered, aware that the fight over public education is neither isolated nor inevitable, and that the systems shaping young people’s futures are visible, traceable, and therefore contestable.

The intended impact is cinematic clarity: a political feature that feels urgent and contemporary, emotionally accessible yet intellectually rigorous, and visually confident enough to compete in major festivals and on premium platforms.

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Budget

This section includes information about this project.

Editing doc film creative doc award award team independent. Independent production journey creative story festival award producer team producer.

Grants & Awards

2024 RACC Grant (Portland, OR)
2025 Portland City Arts Grant

Rights

This section includes information about this project.

Story festival cinema independent festival independent award cinema production creative. Team festival story independent film camera journey director camera creative screenplay producer festival director cinema.

Our Ask

Class Wars is fully in production, backed by meaningful early support. To date, the project has secured $10,000 in grants and $30,000 in individual giving. In addition, the director has invested $125,000 in production as the launch project for History Dance Club, demonstrating substantial financial commitment and belief in the film’s long-term value.

We are now seeking $75,000 in bridge financing to bring the film to a compelling rough cut in advance of market submissions. This funding will directly support editorial, archival licensing, legal, and score positioning the film for a premiere-driven launch and premium broadcast or streamer conversations.

This is a catalytic stage investment. With principal production underway across the U.S., Germany, and Scotland, the remaining bridge capital will unlock a market-ready cut and accelerate festival, sales, and distribution engagement.

We are open to equity investment, co-production partnerships, and tax-deductible 501(c)(3) contributions through our fiscal sponsor. We are also seeking strategic producing partners and international collaborators as we move toward completion.

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Class Wars

Logline

Clips

Team

Joseph Erikson

Kurt Engfehr

Erin London

Joseph Erikson

Budget

Grants & Awards

Rights

Stills

Our Ask