THE PLOT

On April 1, 2022, a group of workers made history by achieving what everyone thought was impossible: winning an internal election to become Amazon’s first unionized location in America. The feat would be extraordinary for any union, but the Amazon Labor Union accomplished it without any prior organizing experience, without any institutional support, and with a total budget of only $120,000 raised online. The group’s style and strategies are completely unconventional: from wearing costumes to press conferences to the free distribution of marijuana to workers. Despite facing a corporate superpower, with minimal legal protection and very few chances of success, the ALU did not give up, remaining true to its beliefs about collective action and the dignity and power of the working class, achieving what has been considered the most significant victory for American workers since the 1930s.

THE DIRECTORS

Brett Story is an award-winning filmmaker and writer based in Toronto. Her films have screened in theaters and at numerous festivals, including CPH:DOX, SXSW, True/False, and Sheffield Doc/Fest. She directed the award-winning films The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) and The Hottest August (2019) and is the author of the book Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America. The Hottest August was recommended by the New York Times and was named one of the top ten documentary films of 2019 by over a dozen publications, including Variety, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair. Brett has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Sundance Institute and was named by Variety as one of the 10 documentarians to watch. In 2020, she was nominated for the Cinema Eye Award for Best Director. She holds a PhD in geography and currently teaches Media Praxis at the University of Toronto.

Stephen Maing is an Emmy Award-winning director based in New York. His documentary Crime + Punishment, which he directed, shot, and edited, won a Special Jury Prize at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, an Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary. His previous films, High Tech, Low Life, which he directed, shot, and edited over five years, and The Surrender, have screened internationally and been distributed by P.O.V. and Field of Vision, respectively. Maing is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, Sundance Institute Fellow, NBC Original Voices Fellow, John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Reporting Fellow, and received the prestigious Courage Under Fire Award from IDA.