{"id":856135,"date":"2026-09-22T02:40:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T02:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/856135\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T02:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T02:40:15","slug":"amazon-ups-workers-star-in-barbara-kopples-union-town-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/856135\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon, UPS Workers Star In Barbara Kopple’s ‘Union Town’ Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFifty years ago, a young director named Barbara Kopple<\/a> came out with her first film, a documentary she thought would be little seen.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I started making the film, I thought, \u2018Oh, my parents will see it and their friends and maybe a museum will show it,\u2019\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat film was Harlan County U.S.A., about a long running strike at a coal mine in southeast Kentucky, and it was immediately hailed as brilliant, earning Kopple an Academy Award. She would earn a second Oscar for her 1991 documentary American Dream, about a strike at a Hormel Foods plant in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

\n\tKopple has made many other documentaries in intervening years \u2013 on actor Gregory Peck, singer Sharon Jones, and country band the Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks), among others. But she returns to the theme for which she is best known \u2013 working people in America \u2014 in her new documentary Union Town<\/a>. It just held its U.S. premiere at the Camden International Film Festival<\/a> in Maine after bowing at the Venice Film Festival earlier in September.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"UPS<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tUPS workers walk a \u2018practice picket line\u2019 on July 7, 2023, in New York City, ahead of a possible strike.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTIMOTHY A. CLARY\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tUnion Town follows the battle for better wages and working conditions on three fronts in New York City \u2014 at UPS, at Amazon, and among \u201cdeliveristas\u201d \u2013 that is, people who work for apps like DoorDash making food runs for customers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think that they [labor organizers] have a big fight on their hands, but I think that they\u2019re road warriors and I feel an awful lot of hope,\u201d Kopple tells Deadline in an interview at the Camden Opera House, where Union Town screened. \u201cEach time they win something, it\u2019s glorious. It\u2019s wonderful. And they get a little closer and a little closer. And what else can you do? You have to keep fighting\u2026 Looking at the people that they work with who can hardly make a living or people who die in the plants because there\u2019s no air conditioning [in summer] or no heat in the winter, it\u2019s just a very human thing to do, so you can\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the past four decades, union participation in America has dropped by about half. \u201c[But] they\u2019re still there. They\u2019re still there,\u201d Kopple says of unions. \u201cAnd if you don\u2019t have them, you don\u2019t have anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Director<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Barbara Kopple with Antonio Rosario, a Teamsters union organizer, at the U.S. premiere of \u2018Union Town\u2019 at the Camden International Film Festival on Sept. 19, 2026 in Camden, Maine.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthew Carey<\/p>\n

\n\tShe points to Antonio Rosario, a veteran of a 1997 strike at UPS who serves as the Teamsters lead union organizer for Amazon workers in the northeast. At one moment in the film, Rosario is with his young sons at the dinner table and holds a bundle of sticks in his hands to illustrate the importance of worker solidarity.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTony is trying to show them the difference that if you have a lot of people together, it takes too much to break it,\u201d Kopple explains. \u201cAnd if you just have one stick, you can break it. And that\u2019s what it is. It\u2019s people who have your back. It\u2019s people who will help you and it gives you a sense of strength that you can change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOf the three groups seen in the documentary, deliveristas face the worst conditions and pay \u2013 they work year-round in every kind of weather, driving their bikes through snow in winter, for instance. Kopple documents the case of Victor Hidalgo, a 24-year-old man who was working for a pharmacy delivery company in 2024 when a New York Fire Department vehicle hit his bicycle, killing him. At a Q&A following the U.S. premiere, Kopple said Hidalgo\u2019s aunt urged her to put him in the documentary.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe said, \u2018I don\u2019t want anyone to ever forget Victor,\u2019\u201d Kopple recounted. \u201c\u2019Please come and film the funeral. Please come and let people know that these things really happen.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tA DoorDash delivery person prepares to bike in the snow in New York City.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNoam Galai\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tDeliveristas rely on tips as a major source of income, but customers often don\u2019t give them much (one deliverista recalls a person opening his hand to deposit a tip and placing in his palm a piece of candy). What\u2019s worse, the tips they receive through the app may not go to them; in 2025 DoorDash reached a nearly $17 million settlement in New York after being accused of effectively taking workers\u2019 tips. (Per the New York Attorney General\u2019s office, \u201cCustomers were misled into believing their tips would directly benefit Dashers. Instead, DoorDash would keep the tips meant for Dashers and take it out of their guaranteed pay. DoorDash would guarantee pay to a delivery worker, and then only actually pay them whatever the tip did not cover.\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat it does if people get to see this film is maybe they\u2019ll give big tips. Maybe they\u2019ll talk to the people who deliver or at least understand them,\u201d Kopple says. \u201cEver since UPS got their contract, every time I see a UPS truck, I stop and I talk to the driver and I say, \u2018So how\u2019s your contract? How\u2019s work?\u2019 And they\u2019re looking at me like, \u2018Who\u2019s this crazy person?\u2019 But it\u2019s wonderful to do it\u2026 [It shows] somebody cares. Somebody\u2019s out there who cares about them. They\u2019re not invisible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"EP<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tProducer Peter Palandjian, Teamsters union organizer Antonio Rosario, director Barbara Kopple, and producer Hannes Hosp attend the \u2018Union Town\u2019 photocall at the Venice Film Festival on September 9, 2026.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAurore Marechal\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tAutlook is handling worldwide film sales for Union Town. The 2024 documentary Union<\/a>, about the successful effort to organize workers at an Amazon facility in Staten Island, NY, struggled to find U.S. distribution (it was clear Prime Video wouldn\u2019t touch it). That film by Stephen Maing and Brett Story is now streaming through Criterion. <\/p>\n

\n\tKopple says it\u2019s \u201ctoo soon to tell\u201d about potential distribution of Union Town. \u201cThis was the third time the film has ever shown, and I had just finished it maybe two weeks before Venice. So, it\u2019s totally at the beginning. I mean, I hope it gets great distribution and gets shown far and wide.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifty years ago, a young director named Barbara Kopple came out with her first film, a documentary she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[332258,94649,88,206,361442],"class_list":["post-856135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-barbara-kopple","tag-camden-international-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-union-town"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}