Barbara Kopple Completes Labor Trilogy with 'Union Town' at Ji.hlava

Two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple completes her labor-rights trilogy with "Union Town," which screens at the Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival after stops in Venice and Toronto. The film follows U.S. delivery and warehouse workers at UPS and Amazon, along with app-based couriers known as "deliveristas," as they push for a better future.

Kopple won her Oscars for "Harlan County U.S.A.," about striking miners in Kentucky, and "American Dream," about the 1985-1986 Hormel meatpackers' strike, the latter shared with producer Arthur Cohn. She told Variety that those years with working communities shaped both her filmmaking and her life.

Why she returned to labor stories

"I guess I've always been drawn to stories about people fighting for dignity and fairness in their lives," Kopple said. "When I made 'Harlan County' and then 'American Dream,' I spent many years with the coal miners and the meatpackers, and with their families. Those experiences shaped me as a filmmaker and as a person."

She frames the present as another turning point. "I learned so much about their courage, about what it takes for ordinary people to stand up to powerful institutions and how deeply these struggles affect entire communities," she said. "That's what drew me back. We're living through another important moment in labor history."

What does the pandemic have to do with it?

Everything, in Kopple's reading. After COVID-19, many delivery workers began to feel they were "disposable." Kopple takes aim at that word directly.

"They were risking their lives for others, and people didn't understand that. They didn't think about those who delivered their packages or worked in the warehouses," she said. "That's one of the reasons for this film: so that people can see and feel who these workers are. And never, ever treat them as 'disposable' again."

Her method is slow immersion. "I like to dig deep and really get to know people. I really love and respect them. They are my heroes; they're so courageous and passionate," she said. Trust, she adds, comes quickly when subjects want to talk. "It doesn't take long if they want to talk. I spend time with them so that audiences can feel what their experiences are like. I really think documentaries can create empathy."

The workers behind the film

One subject, William, was a musician in his home country. He still plays, but his options stay narrow until he can become a naturalized citizen — which Kopple calls "very difficult under our current administration, if not impossible." Many workers feel isolated until they find kinship with others in the same position.

A key scene makes that idea physical. Longtime Teamster union organizer Tony Rosario shows his children that you can't break a big stack of kindling, but you can break a single piece. "It's his way of teaching them about solidarity and the importance of working together so that you're never alone," Kopple said. "That's how you win."

She extends the solidarity logic to her own field. "We're not competitive with each other. We want each other to do well. If one of us succeeds, many of us will," she said of documentary filmmakers.

Victories on screen

Kopple deliberately avoided a dark tone, and the film records wins, not just struggle. In 2025, delivery platform DoorDash agreed to pay $17 million to settle claims it used customer tips to subsidize worker wages in New York. "It's actually very hopeful," she said.

Venice delivered its own payoff. "We brought in Amazon workers and the crowd stood up and cheered them on. Seeing them happy and excited, and seeing their worlds up on a screen, was emotional for all of us."

She sees the record as permanent. "Years later, people will be able to look back on this film and gain a better understanding of what happened. They can't erase this history."

Documentaries, she argues, matter "more than ever" in a fast media cycle, because they let audiences slow down and hear voices that are usually ignored. Cabin Creek Films produced "Union Town," with Autlook Filmsales handling sales — and Kopple says the current moment makes her want to make more of them, not fewer.