Squirrel Wars

LOGLINE: A New York artist's obsession makes her the leader of a squirrel war on Facebook. The pressure cooker of quarantine mixed with the polarization of politics intensifies the ire of squirrel lovers everywhere. SYNOPSIS: An art director, burlesque performer and "keeper of the nuts" squirrel enthusiast, Madley has over the past decade turned her Manhattan apartment into a clubhouse for neighborhood squirrels. Devoting time and love to the hobby, she has trained the naturally skittish animals to the point where she can pet them, play with them, and bond in the way we're used to seeing people connect with dogs or cats. Online she connected with fellow squirrel lovers, a subculture that seems similar in spirit to the cat meme crowd but with proudly off-kilter tastes in their furry friends. The biggest Facebook group devoted to squirrel pictures and videos, by last year, counted 54,000 members, Madley as a prominent among them. As Americans went off the rails in the late Trump era amid the pandemic and the 2020 election season, a proxy war took over Madley's online squirrel community. Nazis and white supremacists used squirrels to propagandize, and every political faction found squirrels and memes for their cause, splintering into Trump supporting Confederate flag wavers and the more progressive set with Biden, rainbow and Black Lives Matter paraphernalia. Madley got caught in the middle of it all. "It was America," she says in the film. "It was exactly where we are at."