Author Archives: Labor Film Database

Release date: March 27, 2019 (USA)
Director: Michal Aviad
Language: Hebrew
Awards: Ophir Award for Best Actress
Nominations: Ophir Award for Best Film, MORE

Orna, (Liron Ben Shlush) is the mother of three young children with a husband struggling to start his own restaurant. To help support her family Orna returns to the workplace, landing a job with a former army superior, Benny (Menashe Noy) who is now a successful real estate developer. While Orna embraces her new position and tries to balance its demands with her home life, she begins to experience escalating sexual harassment from her boss. Her rapid rise through the ranks and her increasing financial success seem to parallel a pattern of predatory behavior which ultimately brings her career and marital relationship to the brink. This timely and devastating story is expertly told by long time feminist filmmaker Michal Aviad.

2019 ‧ Documentary ‧ 1h 29m
9to5: The Story of a Movement is an 2020 American documentary film directed and produced by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar. The film revolves around 9to5, an organization established to improve working conditions and ensuring the rights of women and families.
Release date: May 31, 2019 (USA)
Directors: Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert
Distributed by: PBS Distribution
Music composed by: Wendy Blackstone
Producers: Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert

Jay Galione, son of a postal worker, investigates the dark corners of the U.S. Postal Service. Across the country, brave employees stand up to injustice on the job and fight to Save the People’s Post Office. A moving indictment of the toxic culture and push to downsize, this eye-opening documentary allows viewers to hear from experts and advocates including Ralph Nader and Richard Wolff, and directly from the selfless and courageous people hidden behind the scenes, long suffering and ignored.

2020
Directed by Jay Galione

Film website

2019 56:49:00
Eugene Victor Debs was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. A documentary about Eugene V. Debs made by Indianapolis public TV station WFYI and narrated by Danny Glover.
More info here

A tribute to Boston’s Colonial Packinghouse Workers of Local 11, who, in 1954, survived the city’s longest strike and made interracial cooperation a hallmark of their struggle. Released in 1988; remastered in 2019.

Glory Days is a documentary about Packinghouse Workers Local 11’s strike in Boston in 1954-55.  This strike, the longest in Massachusetts history, was one in which black and white workers and leaders participated, and in which a local came back after being decertified.

The video was recently remastered. It was originally made by a local film maker and the Massachusetts History Workshop in 1988 and included interviews with original leaders and strikers. There are also scenes from a reunion organized 2 years after the plant was closed when the company was bought in 1986.

29 minutes; entire video available above

2020 ‧ 1h 32m
Filmmaker Jeff Kaufman presents an immersive portrait of human rights activist and political prisoner Nasrin Sotoudeh and the remarkably resilient Iranian women’s rights movement.
Initial release: October 1, 2020
Director: Jeff Kaufman
Narrated by: Olivia Colman
Cast: Olivia Colman
Producers: Jeff Kaufman, Marcia Ross
Music composed by: Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty

NOTE: “She is, among other things, a lawyer-activist for labor in Iran. Iran has now imprisoned her again. The film is powerfully moving.”

Film website

2018 ‧ Drama ‧ 1h 42m

A young chambermaid working in one of the most luxurious hotels in Mexico City enrolls in the hotel’s adult education program to help improve her life.
Initial release: November 14, 2019 (Brazil)
Director: Lila Aviles
Language: Spanish
Nominations: Ariel Award for Best Breakthrough Artist, MORE
Awards: Ariel Award for Best First Work, Platino Award for Best Ibero-American First Film

The aspirations and daily life of a young woman who works at a posh hotel in Mexico City are the subject of this insightful feature film. More details here.

2014 ‧ Drama/Romance ‧ 1h 24m
1h 23min | Comedy, Drama, Romance | 1 April 2016 (Mexico) Economy has collapsed. Among the affected ones lives the rebel teenager Flavia, and her old and grumpy neighbor Martin. Both will learn to relate , not just to survive the crisis, but to find the sense of their lives.

Initial release: 2014 (Mexico)
Director: Max Zunino
Producers: Max Zunino, Sofía Espinosa, Gloria Charrasco, Joceline Hernandez
Screenplay: Max Zunino, Sofía Espinosa
Nominations: Ariel Award for Best First Work

Two Mexico City neighbors – a teenaged girl trying to become independent and an aging salesman laid off from his job – come to terms with each other and with poor people who have set up an encampment in the street outside their door.
Details here