This surprising and tender documentary offers a fascinating insight into the minds of one woman and her ‘patriot’ friends. They are MAGA supporters, most of whom were involved in the January 6 2021 storming of the Capitol in Washington DC.
The contact point is Noelle Cook (aka Tara in the film) who’d initially approached the women as part of an academic study. But she found herself getting involved in their lives, so the study was set aside although her research carried on. And, as we see plainly, she was sometimes the only person they felt they could reach out to for help.
We meet Yvonne, an ex-Marine drill sergeant – no mean achievement for a woman – and a proud patriot, who felt it was her duty to invade the Capitol. She’s rapid-fire talkative, assertive and clearly relishes being seen as fearless. And she loves to livestream her life on Facebook, which we sometimes get to watch her doing, in some fascinatingly layered meta-moments.
As we meet her, she’s back in Washington DC awaiting sentencing for her part in January 6. A prison sentence is not something she’s looking forward to, and a slight crack in her toughness shows through. But she is confident that ‘all’ will be revealed and the sentence will never happen, as she awaits some last-minute reprieve.
Idaho road trip
Meanwhile, Yvonne embarks on a road trip back to her home in Idaho with Noelle Cook and Liz Smith (the film’s English director). Yvonne talks non-stop, reeling off a seemingly unending and intricately woven blend of spirituality, religion and conspiracy theory, all delivered with absolute certainty. It’s quite exhausting to listen to. And sometimes funny. And a bit frightening.
Yvonne doesn’t stick to one topic for too long, moving quickly on to the next theory, especially if her truth is challenged in any way. Cook and Smith are only ever gently questioning; there’s nothing confrontational in these exchanges.
Cook later says that conspiracy theories used to just be one small part of her and Yvonne’s conversations: mostly they’d talk about life and share their experiences of being middle-aged women. But now, she says, conspiracy is all Yvonne talks about. In a post-film Q&A, Smith acknowledges how difficult it was to edit that footage because of Yvonne’s constant elision from one conspiracy theory to the next with no breaks.
Meeting other conspiracists
We stop off along the route to meet Tammy, another January 6er, who claims she’d decided to go along mainly for the company. Among the scenic hills where she lives, she confirms in her throaty rasp her life as a former drug addict. Tammy really seems to have no-one in her life, especially since the suicide of her son. Only gradually do we begin to comprehend that he had most recently been living as Sabrina, his trans identity. Tammy’s clearly struggling to come to terms with all of this as she pores ceaselessly over photo albums, her trauma very much apparent.
We also encounter Jill, a psychiatric nurse, who makes bizarre online conspiracy videos where she’s glossily groomed and in cleavage-revealing outfits. There’s something deeply unsettling about Jill. In the director’s Q&A, we find out that her story has not panned out well: a bad marriage and severe mental health problems.
And we almost meet the Powells, a Prepper family. In a brief, odd moment, some onscreen text says only that Smith decided not to film them. This only really becomes clear in the Q&A, with the director confiding that it was a very disturbing experience. Arriving at the house, a large, smart homestead on a vast estate, they were met with a room full of men seated around a table, one of whom, by way of introduction, stood up and asked the visitors, “Are you patriots?”
Holding on to the humanity
The first half of the film simply allows all these events to unspool. It can feel a little overwhelming and even a bit confusing as it just pours off the screen, leaving the viewer to absorb this hurricane of sensory downloads.
In the second half, the extraordinary Noelle Cook’s observations feature more prominently, and add insight to what we’ve been witnessing. As someone who has been there for these women when no-one else has, and even though she despairs of how deep down the conspiracy rabbit hole they have gone, she’s still holding tightly on to them. She gets very emotional at times, a real testament to her warmth and patience.
Yvonne does get sent to prison, her faith temporarily shaken, but she puts a brave face on it. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight we know that she will be released and pardoned in Trump’s second term. And we might guess that this will only vindicate her and strengthen her beliefs.
Misinformation and disinformation
For all the fantastical aspects of the conspiracies that may seem ridiculous or even laughable, there are elements that now – in 2026, four years on from these recordings – bear the hallmarks of truth. An often-repeated word in this documentary is ‘paedophile’, and it’s notable that all the women seem to have some experience of sexual abuse in their lives. With the partial release of the Epstein files, the women’s conspiratorial talk of cannibalism, ritual sacrifices and child sexual abuse seems – horrifically – a lot less like paranoia.
Where there is truth, it’s a parallel truth, seen through a distorting lens: like a magic act where the conspiracists were always being misdirected. Look over there. Blame the Democrats. At the film’s end, a raft of text screens debunks each theory one by one.
Like all good documentaries, there’s no direction on what to think. The women speak for themselves, and they are treated with dignity, compassion and empathy. We’re allowed to begin to understand how damaged they are, how abandoned by a country where ‘winning’ is everything, and the most feared word of all is ‘loser’.
Yvonne makes a perceptive comment on the lack of community in the USA, and how it’s been sacrificed for the pursuit of individuality. In the vastness and emptiness of middle America, isolated and lonely people turned to the internet in search of a sense of community. What they found instead was misinformation and disinformation, and a shared comfort in feeling that none of this was really their fault. It’s all the elites. Now, that part might just have been true.
The Conspiracists with director Q&A was shown at Hebden Bridge Picture House. Contact Page75 Productions to arrange a screening or to stream Liz Smith’s other films.
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