Union
Awards
Denver Film Festival (2024) – Nominated: Maysles Brothers Award: Best Documentary
Cinema Eye Honors Awards, US (2025) – Winner: The Unforgettables
Cinema Eye Honors Awards, US (2025) – Nominated: Outstanding Achievement in Direction
Cinema Eye Honors Awards, US (2025) – Winner: Outstanding Achievement in Production
Houston Film Critics Society Awards (2025) – Nominated: Best Documentary Feature
Adelaide Film Festival (2024) – Winner: AFF Change Award
Dokufest International Documentary and Short Film Festival (2024) – Nominated: Truth Award
Indie Memphis Film Festival (2024) – Winner: Best Documentary Feature
DMZ International Documentary Film Festival (2024) – Nominated: White Goose Award: International Competition
Gotham Awards (2024) – Nominated: Gotham Independent Film Award: Best Documentary Feature
Sundance Film Festival (2024) – Nominated: Grand Jury Prize: Documentary
Sundance Film Festival (2024) – Winner: U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Art of Change
Woodstock Film Festival (2024) – Nominated: Leon Gast Award: Best Feature Documentary
Woodstock Film Festival (2024) – Nominated: Best Editing: Documentary Feature
CPH:DOX (2024) – Nominated: F:ACT Award
Visions du Réel International Film Festival Nyon (2024) – Nominated: Audience Award: Grand Angle Competition
Chlotrudis Awards (2025) – Nominated: Best Documentary
Screenings – Jozi
This important film chronicles the struggle of a group of Amazon employees to form a local union. Rendered in intimate cinema vérité, Union’s cast includes an unlikely group of warehouse workers as they launch a grassroots campaign outside the fulfillment centre in New York where they work—or used to work before being let go. Led by the charismatic Chris Smalls, the diverse group start the Amazon Labor Union, embarking on a battle with one of the world’s most powerful companies. Taking on the tech giant with its unlimited resources, and without real support from national unions, the group finds the odds stacked against them. While the film focuses on the fight of the workers to unionise, it also includes some of the corporate messaging that Amazon uses to fight against unionisation. The footage is a chilling portrait of the home-shopping monolith, which is committed to satisfying the needs of its consumers while treating its own workers as replaceable humanoids.
Film Stills
Trailer
Previous Festivals
Adelaide FF (2024)
CPH:DOX (2024)
Denver FF (2024)
DMZ Int’l Doc FF (2024)
Dokufest Int’l Doc and Short FF (2024)
Indie Memphis FF (2024)
Sundance FF (2024)
Visions du Réel Int’l FF Nyon (2024)
Woodstock FF (2024)
Press Comments
While billionaire Jeff Bezos jets himself, his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, Katy Perry and other celebrities into space, on the ground in the warehouses staffed by long-suffering Amazon employees, life is far less glamorous. Directors Brett Story’s and Stephen Maing’s bittersweet documentary traces the long and often seemingly Sisyphean struggle of current and former Amazon employees to unionise and secure basic rights for workers at the company’s Staten Island fulfilment centre. Though it won an award at last year’s Sundance Festival, the documentary has struggled to gain distribution in the US, and it’s obvious that is because Bezos doesn’t want people to see the nasty realities it depicts and the nefarious behaviour that Amazon and its lawyers engage in to ensure that its workers don’t succeed in their efforts. Despite this, the film effectively shows that the struggles of its working protagonists are just, fair and driven by a determination and spirit that even Bezos’ billions can’t squash.
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