When documentarian Barbara Kopple directs a film about the labor movement, she tends to go big.
With 1976’s Harlan County, USA, she documented the dramatic 13-month strike waged by Kentucky coal miners against the Eastover Mining Company, filming armed standoffs and violent altercations between workers and management. In 1990’s American Dream Kopple tackled the failed 1985-1986 strike waged by meatpacking workers against a Minnesota Hormel Foods plant, capturing the splintering of a union in real time. Both films won the Academy Award for best documentary.
Related Stories
Now, Kopple is returning to the subject of worker organizing with a new film interweaving three separate but interconnected labor stories in and around New York City. Since 2023 Kopple has been documenting delivery workers, including those working for Amazon, UPS and food-delivery apps, in their fight for higher wages and improved working conditions. Some of her
...Keep reading this article on Hollywood Reporter.
