The road “it’s an honor to simply be nominated” is a cliche, but it surely’s actually true that touchdown an Oscar nomination comes with status, consideration, and many award-season press protection on the tales behind each movie. However for Union, a documentary movie that follows the historic efforts of a gaggle of Amazon warehouse employees as they launch—and win—the first-ever union campaign on the retail large, there’s a narrative in the truth that they weren’t nominated.
When the inventive staff behind Union first embedded with Amazon Staten Island warehouse employees in 2020, they weren’t seeking to make a buzzy, business movie. They raised their full funds earlier than the Amazon Labor Union even gained its election. They have been dedicated, producer Samantha Curley says, to “documenting this explicit labor wrestle, and asking questions concerning the fashionable workforce and the way persons are politicized by way of work,” lengthy earlier than it was clear simply how large the story would develop into.
However then they have been there to seize that win, they usually have been prepared with years of footage of Chris Smalls, the marketing campaign’s intrepid chief, earlier than he turned an in a single day labor movie star—heading to the White Home and onto the Each day Present and because the topic of main media protection. And it appeared like their documentary may truly be marketable—and massive. They premiered at Sundance 2024, and gained the pageant’s U.S. Documentary Particular Jury Award for the Artwork of Change. “We actually felt like there wasn’t a purpose that it wouldn’t get picked up or distributed,” Curley says. They knew Amazon’s streaming service wouldn’t purchase the movie, after all, however they figured different locations may.
Distributors didn’t clamor to choose it up, although. In truth, the filmmakers received cross after cross. “Not even ‘we’re ready to see’ or ‘it’s a gentle cross’ or simply not listening to again, however laborious no’s, comparatively shortly,” Curley says. So that they pivoted to an unbiased self launch, partnering with 250 labor organizations and affinity teams to display the movie for one night time or restricted runs in additional than 20 cities. These screenings usually offered out, which means Union was the highest-grossing movie for the theaters on these nights. They held showings adopted by Q&As with Amazon Labor Union employees, and screened the movie close to Amazon warehouses. They did a web-based rental launch the place viewers may donate in order that an Amazon employee may watch the movie at no cost.
On this manner, Union’s distribution turned a narrative in itself, mirroring the one the movie instructed—concerning the energy of organizing, how a small group of individuals could make a huge impact, and who institutional techniques actually work for. Curley says not one of the large distributions truly even stated something about Amazon. “What we gathered, that was by no means explicitly acknowledged, was that it was actually about labor,” she says.
The Amazon Labor Union was only one a part of a much bigger wave of organizing happening. Across the similar time, Apple retail employees started organizing (and received their first contract in 2024), as did Disney park characters (who voted to unionize in 2024). Main actions from the United AutoWorkers, Hollywood actors and writers, and extra dominated the news cycle of the previous few years. “This concept of the labor motion and employee energy is so related and threatening that, I feel—and once more, this wasn’t ever explicitly acknowledged—however what we took from these conversations [with distributors] was like, these distributors don’t need folks pointing the finger at them any moreso than they already are,” Curley says.
Usually, some have been additionally shying away from “political” content material—although Curley doesn’t assume that Union, or the expertise of watching it, is overtly political. “In case you’re studying the movie that manner, it’s positively current, however I feel the movie is about group tasks, and concerning the audacious perception that we are able to make something higher, or we are able to change something about our circumstances,” she says.
Despite the fact that the movie itself focuses on Amazon, it affords a broad perspective of the labor motion at giant. “It’s fairly insular to this group of Amazon organizers in Staten Island,” Curley says, “however we labored actually laborious to remind viewers this is only one small a part of this big machine.” The timing of the movie speaks to this as nicely: it’s not a 10-year retrospective of a historic second, however got here out amid an ongoing labor resurgence. “We needed the movie to develop into a part of the dialog about the way forward for work and labor organizing.”
In any case that effort, Union did handle to get shortlisted for the Finest Documentary Function Oscar nominations. “We have been actually lucky to have such sturdy assist and steerage throughout the awards marketing campaign, and perception that the movie may actually be within the dialog,” Curley says. Being shortlisted did improve the movie’s visibility, enhance its unbiased distribution path, and provides the individuals some validation, she provides, for on a regular basis they dedicated to the mission.
“It might have been cool and a distinct journey to have been nominated,” she provides, however not being nominated “permits us to proceed to stability the sort of status of the movie with the actual collective effort and wrestle to get the movie on the market.” (The movie’s inventive staff, together with Curley, contains producer Mars Verrone, cinematographer and producer Martin Dicicco, administrators Stephen Maing and Brett Story, editors Blair McClendon and Malika Zouhali-Worrall, and composer Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe.)
It’s additionally a chance for the movie to maintain paving its personal manner. An Oscars look can appear to be an ending: a grand end result of effort. However Union’s story isn’t over. The staff is already interested by its subsequent part of distribution, and has plans tied to Could Day and Labor Day. It’s exterior of the awards circuit, and so can inform its story past awards season. “Now we simply get to be a movie that’s making an attempt to achieve audiences,” Curley says.
Amazon employees’ battle isn’t over both; greater than two years after unionizing, they nonetheless don’t have a contract. (Staff approved a strike on the end of 2024 as a part of its efforts to get the retail large to barter.) And the bigger dialog about labor isn’t ending both; although the Trump administration is taking steps to dismantle the labor motion and erase employee energy, these threats are additionally bolstering conversations concerning the significance of employees rights, and the ability of collective organizing. The movie may deal with Amazon, however actually it highlights this dichotomy, she notes, of how “organizing is important and in addition unattainable.”
The movie exhibits the Staten Island warehouse win, sure, but in addition how the Amazon Labor Union misplaced its subsequent two elections, and the way infighting and burnout begin to seem among the many organizers. It ends by exhibiting the very beginnings of one more marketing campaign at a warehouse in California. “It’s this concept of, we simply spend time with this small body of workers, and [this is] going to be occurring with employees at each firm and each a part of the world,” Curley says, “and that being inspiring and daunting.”
