AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL is about how, if the change happens just slowly enough, we're all capable of unintentionally tolerating the intolerable. If you want to sleep easy at night, it's pretty easy to convince yourself that a given day's abomination (the Muslim ban, family separation, the Manafort convictions and subsequent revelations, etc. etc. etc.) aren't evidence of an emergency. Well, we've gotten used to this flood of bullshit out of sheer necessity. But we're living through a perpetual crisis. In our own ways, we're all complicit in that crisis, but we're also empowered, through our guaranteed rights, to prevent the further escalation of that crisis. There's an enormous community of activists and journalists and artists and musicians and filmmakers and politicians shouting daily to remind us not to normalize the behavior of our doing-his-best-to-be-an-autocrat president. The fact that he's been foiled nearly every step of the way is proof of the strength of our institutions. But past success is no guarantee of future victory. We're all susceptible to getting boiled alive. That's why we have to keep checking the temperature of the water. We hope you leave this film and think, "Oh, shit. I need to remember to keep my guard up."

— James Kaelan, writer-director-collaborator