How 'Sovereign' Tackles a Cult with Compassion episode artwork

EPISODE · Jul 11, 2025 · 35 MIN

How 'Sovereign' Tackles a Cult with Compassion

from The Bulwark Goes to Hollywood · host The Bulwark

On this week’s episode, I talked to Christian Swegal, the writer-director of the new film Sovereign, about his new film and its focus on the cult-like behavior of the Sovereign Citizen movement. We discussed Nick Offerman’s commanding lead performance, how you adapt a movie with an ending and setting as tragic as this one, and the difficulty of finding compassion even for those who seem to deserve it least. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to check out Sovereign, which is in theaters and on VOD now. And please, share this with a friend! Movies like this don’t have huge ad budgets; they need word of mouth to thrive. It’s a tough story with some great performances by Offerman, Jacob Tremblay, and Dennis Quaid. If you want to see something a little different from the standard franchise fare flooding the multiplex, you have to support movies like Sovereign.

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How 'Sovereign' Tackles a Cult with Compassion

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This episode is 35 minutes long.

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This episode was published on July 11, 2025.

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On this week’s episode, I talked to Christian Swegal, the writer-director of the new film Sovereign, about his new film and its focus on the cult-like behavior of the Sovereign Citizen movement. We discussed Nick Offerman’s commanding lead...

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