Union

Brett Story, Stephen Maing / United States / 2024 / Czech Premiere / 104 min.

synopsis

Amazon's Staten Island warehouse became the multinational company's first US location with its own union in 2022. The film is an observational chronicle of the years-long struggle to establish one. We watch as male and female employees face constant surveillance, threats and tens of millions of dollars worth of disparagement. They themselves have neither money nor experience. But through solidarity and determination, their position grows stronger, and they slowly becomed an equal opponent to the corporate giant. The individual steps necessary to form and sustain a union are captured in a way that makes Union both a suspenseful procedural thriller and a call to collective action.

“While the insidious nature of capitalism will always fundamentally seek to undermine unionization efforts, the workers in Staten Island proved organizing may get messy, but it is what each individual brings of themselves that makes so much possible.” — Stephen Maing

biography

Stephen Maing is an American documentary filmmaker, cinematographer and producer. His documentary Crime + Punishment (2019) won an Emmy Award and a Special Jury Mention at Sundance. His film Union, which he made with Brett Story, won the same award.

Brett Story is a Canadian filmmaker with a PhD in human geography. Her films The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) and The Hottest August (2019) have screened at numerous international festivals. She is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Toronto.