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Why Barbara Kopple’s Labor Films Remain as Urgent as Ever

As her Oscar-winning labor documentaries return to theaters, Kopple reflects on union-busting, gig work, and her latest film on unions.

Barbara Kopple on January 23, 2026 in Park City, Utah

This May Day weekend, possibly the one holiday movie release weekend that Disney does not yet own, Janus Films will bring back director Barbara Kopple’s two Oscar-winning documentaries on the American labor movement, Harlan County, USA (1975) and American Dream (1990). They appear as a double bill in 17 cities for the former’s 50th anniversary and a recently restored 4k print of the latter by Criterion. They tell the stories of two strikes, respectively: a 1973–74 miners strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, and a 1985–86 meatpackers strike at a Hormel factory in Austin, Minnesota. The miners won their strike. The meatpackers did not, and well over half the plant’s workers lost their jobs.

Kopple, now 80, has been documenting the United States left since 1972, when she took part in the collective doc Winter Soldier(1972), which featured Vietnam veterans (like John Kerry) recounting atrocities that they witnessed or in which they participated. Since then, her films have covered the military, labor, sports, entertainment, and this very magazine—in Hot Type!: 150 Years of The Nation. Her prescient Johnny Cash and Tricky Dick (2018) and Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing(2006), on how the far right attempts to censor and silence progressive artists, still ring true, as the Trumps target Jimmy Kimmel once again and Stephen Colbert enters his final month before cancellation on CBS.

Kopple shot her films in the cinema verité style, crossing the purely observational line of traditional documentary to get in close with hand-held cameras, using natural lighting, and finding herself part of the story when strikebreakers physically attacked and shot at her crew in Harlan County while she filmed on the line with workers. The style has been parodied in everything from This is Spinal Tap! to The Office, but in the hands of a master like Kopple, it still resonates powerfully.

I spoke with Kopple earlier this week about the rerelease of her first two films on American labor, and about a third now in post-production on gig workers.

Ben Schwartz: Harlan came out in 1975 and American Dream in 1990. What does the labor movement look like to you today?

Barbara Kopple: Similar. I’ve been doing my third union film now. We’re in editing, and it’s a film about UPS and the Teamsters. Amazon voted to bring in the Teamsters. It’s the deliveristas, the people who bring you your noodle soup when you’re sick, on bikes and motorcycles. UPS has had a union for 100 years, but they still don’t stay with the union. They still try to do things and fire people and hurt people. So you always have to engage. Also, Amazon—they’re all independent workers. There’s thousands and thousands of them. They wear the uniforms, they drive the trucks, they work in their warehouses, and yet they have nothing. They have no benefits.........

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