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Category Archives: 2026 Shortlist

Films under consideration for the 2026 DC Labor FilmFest

NO OTHER CHOICE

2025 * R * 2h 19m
Director: Park Chan-wook
Writers: Donald E. Westlake; Park Chan-wook; Lee Kyoung-mi
Stars: Lee Byung-hun; Son Ye-jin; Woo Seung Kim

After being unemployed for several years, a man devises a unique plan to secure a new job: eliminate his competition.

 

Self Driver

A desperate cab driver joins a mysterious money-making app, leading him into society’s shadows. As the night progresses, his morals are tested and free will questioned. The depths he’ll sink reveal themselves as darkness falls.
2024

1h 30m
Director: Michael Pierro
Writer: Michael Pierro

Stars
Nathanael Chadwick
Reece Presley
Lauren Welchner

 

Alabama Solution

2025; 1h 57m
Directors: Andrew Jarecki, Charlotte Kaufman
Website

Inside one of the nation’s deadliest prison systems, incarcerated men defy the odds to expose a cover-up.
In 2019, filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman (HBO’s The Jinx) visited an Alabama prison, where, off camera, incarcerated men whispered a message: terrible things are going on and being kept secret. This reveal sparked an immersive six-year investigation to discover the reality behind one of the nation’s deadliest prison systems. With unprecedented access and video shot on contraband cell phones, the directors learn of a suspicious and violent death, which wasn’t an isolated incident – and that the official version appears far from the truth. A shocking story of brutality, corruption, and a system in collapse, The Alabama Solution shines a light on the inmates fighting for their survival who, against all odds, embark on a powerful campaign of resistance.

“With vastly overcrowded prisons that are grossly understaffed, the men speak of brutal violence, drug addiction, years spent living in filth and decades of laboring with no pay. Some of this became better documented in the news media during the years covered in the film — the Department of Justice sued the state of Alabama in 2020 — but the issues continue and the constitutionality of the state’s “involuntary servitude” work release programs is being challenged as well.”
The New York Times

 

Day Shift (2022)

R; 1h 53m
A hard-working, blue-collar dad just wants to provide a good life for his quick-witted 10-year-old daughter. His mundane San Fernando Valley pool cleaning job is a front for his real source of income: hunting and killing vampires.

‘Day Shift’ Review: Stakes Out

 

Emily the Criminal (2022)

R; 1h 37m
Emily (Aubrey Plaza) is saddled with student debt and locked out of the job market due to a minor criminal record. Desperate for income, she takes a shady gig as a “dummy shopper,” buying goods with stolen credit cards supplied by a handsome and charismatic middleman named Youcef (Theo Rossi). Faced with a series of dead-end job interviews, Emily soon finds herself seduced by the quick cash and illicit thrills of black-market capitalism, and increasingly interested in her mentor Youcef. Together, they hatch a plan to bring their business to the next level in Los Angeles.

Director

 

Get a Job (2016)

R; 1h 23m
After college, Will is having problems getting a good, lasting job, as are his roomies, his girlfriend, and his just-fired dad.

 

The Spook Who Sat By the Door (1973)

1973 action crimedrama film based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Sam Greenlee (which was first published in the United Kingdom by Allison and Busby after being rejected by American publishers). It is both a satire of the civil rights struggle in the United States of the late 1960s and a serious attempt to focus on the issue of Black militancy. Dan Freeman, the titular protagonist, is enlisted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in its elitist espionage program, becoming its token Black person. After mastering agency tactics, however, he becomes disillusioned and drops out to train young Black people in Chicago to become “Freedom Fighters”. As a story of one man’s reaction to white ruling-class hypocrisy, the film is loosely autobiographical and personal.

The novel and the film also dramatize the CIA’s history of giving training to persons and/or groups who later utilize their specialized intelligence training against the agency – an example of “blowback.”

Directed by Ivan Dixon, co-produced by Dixon and Greenlee, from a screenplay written by Greenlee with Mel Clay, the film starred Lawrence CookPaula Kelly, Janet League, J. A. Preston, and David Lemieux. It was mostly shot in Gary, Indiana, because the themes of racial strife did not please Chicago’s then-mayor Richard J. Daley. The soundtrack was an original score composed by Herbie Hancock, who grew up in the same neighborhood as Greenlee.

In 2012, the film was added to the National Film Registry, which annually chooses 25 films that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”.

 

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Tales From The Long Memory (2020)

54 minutes


Folk singing rabble-rouser U. Utah Phillips crisscrossed the country on freight trains searching for teachers. He experienced ultimate freedom, no home ahead and none behind but also the works of mercy. He discovered the dynamic struggle of people to organize themselves and demand a quality of life for themselves and those around them that provides bread, yes, but roses too.

Tales From the Long Memory follows the people who look to Utah as their teacher now while they continue the work that inspired him throughout his life. In Detroit, the Wobbly Kitchen shows how the simple act of feeding someone can spark a community of solidarity in a city struggling to rebuild its glory. In Madison, the sweet sounds of labor songs echo through the capital building every day at noon. In Portland, the Sisters of the Road Café serve up dignity and nourishment at a price you can afford. And in a quaint northern California gold rush town, a dedicated group of community members grow an idea into a house of hospitality called Utah’s Place.

Watch on Eventive at WUFF

 

Dear God (1996)

PG; 1h 52m

A con artist goes from no good to doing good when he is sentenced to a job in the dead letter department at the post office. When letters written to God start getting results, and replies, people everywhere are amazed. The post office, however, is annoyed.

 

Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss (2019)

16m
Salesgirl discovers the ultimate secret to regularization.

A Dark Satire About Worker Exploitation in the Philippines