“It’s an honor simply to be nominated” could also be a cliché, nevertheless it’s nonetheless true that touchdown an Oscar nomination brings status, consideration, and plenty of awards-season press protection. However for Union, a documentary that follows the historic efforts of a bunch of Amazon warehouse staff as they launch—and win—the first-ever union campaign on the retail big, there’s a narrative in the truth that it wasn’t nominated.
When the artistic workforce behind Union first embedded with Amazon Staten Island warehouse staff in 2020, they weren’t trying to make a buzzy, business movie. They raised their full finances earlier than the Amazon Labor Union even received its election. They have been dedicated, producer Samantha Curley says, to “documenting this explicit labor battle and asking questions concerning the fashionable workforce and the way persons are politicized by means of work” lengthy earlier than it was clear simply how massive the story would turn into.
However they have been there to seize that win, and so they 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 superstar—heading to the White Home in 2022 and onto The Every day Present for an interview with Trevor Noah and because the topic of main media protection. And it appeared like their documentary might truly be marketable—and massive. It premiered at Sundance 2024 and received the competition’s U.S. Documentary Particular Jury Award for the Artwork of Change. “We actually felt like there wasn’t a motive 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 would possibly.
However distributors didn’t clamor to choose it up. The truth is, the filmmakers bought go after go. “Not even ‘we’re ready to see’ or ‘it’s a tender go’ or simply not listening to again, however exhausting no’s, comparatively shortly,” Curley says. In order that they pivoted to an unbiased self-release, partnering with 250 labor organizations and affinity teams to display screen the movie for one evening or for restricted runs in additional than 20 cities. These screenings usually bought 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 staff and screened the movie close to Amazon warehouses. They did a web based rental launch the place viewers might donate in order that an Amazon employee might watch the movie without spending a dime.
On this method, Union’s distribution turned a narrative in itself, mirroring the one the movie instructed—concerning the energy of organizing, about how a small group of individuals can have a huge impact, and who institutional methods actually work for. Curley says not one of the massive distributions truly even stated something about Amazon. “What we gathered, that was by no means explicitly said, 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 identical time, Apple retail staff started organizing (and bought their first contract in 2024), as did Disneyland character performers (who voted to unionize in 2024). Main actions from the United Auto Workers, Hollywood actors and writers, and others dominated the news cycle of the previous few years. Curley says it was changing into clear how related and threatening the labor motion and employee energy is. “Once more, this wasn’t ever explicitly said, however what we took from these conversations [with distributors] was like, these distributors don’t need individuals pointing the finger at them any extra so than they already are,” she says.
Typically, 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. “When you’re studying the movie that method, it’s undoubtedly current, however I feel the movie is about group tasks, and concerning the audacious perception that we will make something higher, or we will change something about our circumstances,” she says.
Although the movie itself focuses on Amazon, it presents a broad perspective of the labor motion at giant. “It’s fairly insular to this group of Amazon organizers on Staten Island,” Curley says, “however we labored actually exhausting to remind viewers this is only one small a part of this enormous machine.” The timing of the movie additionally speaks to this: it’s not a 10-year retrospective of a historic second nevertheless it got here out in actual time, amid an ongoing labor resurgence. “We wished the movie to turn into a part of the dialog about the way forward for work and labor organizing.”
In spite of everything that effort, Union did handle to get short-listed for an Academy Award for Greatest Documentary Options in 2025, which signifies that out of greater than 14,000 movies made final 12 months, Union turned considered one of solely 15 finalists in rivalry for a nomination in its class. “We have been actually lucky to have such sturdy assist and steering inside the awards marketing campaign and perception that the movie might actually be within the dialog,” Curley says. Being short-listed did enhance the movie’s visibility, enhance its independent-distribution path, and provides the individuals some validation for on a regular basis they’d dedicated to the challenge.
“It might have been cool and a special journey to have been nominated,” she provides, however not being nominated “permits us to proceed to steadiness the type of status of the movie with the actual collective effort and battle to get the movie on the market.” (The movie’s artistic workforce, together with Curley, contains administrators Brett Story and Stephen Maing, producer Mars Verrone, cinematographer Martin Dicicco, editors Blair McLendon and Malika Zouhali-Worrall, and composer Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe.)
It’s additionally a chance for the movie to maintain paving its personal method. An Oscars look can appear to be an ending: a grand end result of effort. However Union’s story isn’t over. The workforce is already eager about its subsequent part of distribution and has plans tied to Could Day and Labor Day. It’s exterior 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 succeed in audiences,” Curley says.
Amazon staff’ combat can also be removed from over. Greater than two years after unionizing, they nonetheless don’t have a contract. (Employees licensed a strike on the end of 2024 as a part of its efforts to get the retail big to barter.) And the bigger dialog about labor additionally isn’t ending. 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 staff’ rights and the ability of collective organizing. The movie would possibly deal with Amazon, however actually it highlights this dichotomy, says Curley, of how “organizing is important and in addition inconceivable.”
The movie reveals the Staten Island warehouse staff’ win, sure, but additionally 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 with displaying the very beginnings of a marketing campaign at one other warehouse, Amazon’s ONT-8 success middle in California’s Inland Empire. “It’s this concept of, we simply spend time with this small body of workers, and [this is] going to be taking place with staff at each firm and each a part of the world,” Curley says, “and that being inspiring and daunting.”
