After observing exceptionally abnormal rates of cancer in his Minden patients in the mid 1980s, Pakistani-born oncologist Dr. Hassan Amjad became the southern West Virginian town’s greatest champion, advocating fiercely for recognition of the persistent risk to human health caused by carcinogenic PCBs left from the mining industry. Some thirty-five years and three EPA clean-up attempts later, Minden remains largely ignored even as its population has dwindled from over 1200 to just under 250. When Hassan passes from a massive heart attack at the age of 70, his unsuspecting daughter Ayne, also a physician, inherits his decades-long advocacy efforts overnight. Grief-stricken but spurred by her father’s mandate to “help others” at all costs, Ayne hatches an ambitious plan to relocate the entire town to a 97-acre plot of land purchased by her late father as a retirement site. As she mobilizes allies in Minden and beyond, she is surprised to discover that her biggest challenge is an attachment to home that makes the town’s most endangered residents reluctant to leave. When a global pandemic unexpectedly thrusts Ayne into a powerful state government position, she sees an opportunity to move past her stalled relocation efforts and expand her locus of impact well beyond Minden. Ironically, the more Ayne pours herself into this new role, the more distance she creates from her closest allies – the Minden activists that have been involved since her father’s work began some four decades earlier. What’s more, her new work requires that she abandon her private practice and her hopes for a family of her own, subsuming her identity almost completely. As pressures mount on all sides – the creeping sickness of Minden’s aging residents, the growing sense of futility around achieving meaningful change in the cancer-stricken town, and the never ending political stresses associated with working at the state level – Ayne enlists the help of her personal lawyer to build a class-action lawsuit against the EPA in a last-ditch effort to help. Minden’s activist residents bristle at the new attorney’s aggressive approach, and this partnership implodes in dramatic fashion when small town gossip leads to accusations of fraud. Left with few options, Ayne feels stuck between a deeply ingrained mandate to “help others” that is the legacy of her late father and the increasing realization that she is sacrificing her own life in an attempt to do so. With the cathartic acknowledgment that her father’s death continues to haunt her, she must choose between her sense of duty and her own happiness. IMPOSSIBLE TOWN shows us tireless social and environmental struggle through the eyes of a cast of characters that complicate common rural Appalachian stereotypes. Dr. Ayne Amjad alone is a study in contrasts: a devout Republican with a strong activist bent, a daughter of immigrants who is a pillar of her largely white community, and a wealthy physician-turned-public-servant who spends her time advocating for her disenfranchised and low-income neighbors. With Ayne and the rest of our cast, nothing is as it seems. In addition to adding to the breadth of stories about how environmental catastrophes disproportionately affect the poor, IMPOSSIBLE TOWN has much to say about our complex relationships with home – the connections we form with the places we’re from, and the difficulty we have in letting go of those places, even when they’re killing us. Through the ambitions of Ayne and other Minden activists, the film explores the persistent modern American fantasy that complex issues are best solved through singular heroes and miracle solutions rather than the decidedly grittier work of slow and patient social, political, and legal exercises. Most poignantly, IMPOSSIBLE TOWN is an ode to the way we commune with our parents long after they’ve left this plane, their aspirations and legacies lighting our paths to unanticipated destinations, their absence leaving a painful void in our lives that never fully heals.
