American Documentary

Overview

Brooklyn, N.Y. – May 28, 2025 – POV, the multi-Emmy® and Peabody award-winning documentary series, opens its 38th season with UNION, directed by Stephen Maing and Brett Story. The documentary follows a group of Amazon workers, led by Chris Smalls, as they spearhead a bold and often controversial unionization campaign against one of the world’s largest corporations.

Produced by Samantha Curley, Mars Verrone, Stephen Maing, Brett Story, and Martin DiCicco, UNION will make its national broadcast premiere on Monday, June 23, 2025 at 10 pm (check local listings) on PBS Television. It will then be available to stream until August 31, 2025 at pbs.org, and the PBS App. Now in its 38th season, POV remains America's longest-running nonfiction series.

Through intimate cinema vérité, UNION chronicles the extraordinary efforts of an unlikely group of warehouse workers as they launch a grassroots union campaign at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York. Under the direction of the charismatic but underestimated Chris Smalls, the diverse band of workers start the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) and embark on a journey against one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world. The odds are stacked against them, as the group finds itself up against a tech industry giant with unlimited resources, without major support from national unions or politicians, and while navigating internal divisions within their own ranks. Filmmakers Brett Story and Stephen Maing document the struggle from day one, offering a gripping human drama about the fight for power and dignity in today's globalized economic landscape. The film’s participants are Christian Smalls, Angelika Maldonado, Connor Spence, Derrick Palmer, Jason Anthony, Gerald Bryson, Jordan Flowers, Natalie Monarrez, and Madeline Wesley.

Co-directors Brett Story and Stephen Maing said: “The entire UNION team could not be more thrilled for the film to be released on PBS’s POV. As labor issues and working-class concerns move to the forefront of national conversation—touching families and communities everywhere—we're deeply grateful for the opportunity to share this powerful chronicle of grassroots organizing with viewers throughout the country. PBS is a national treasure and the perfect home for our film.”

"We're so excited to have UNION opening POV's 38th season. The level of access these filmmakers have in this film is awe-inspiring and we can't wait for more audiences to see it and to understand what it takes to start a movement," said Erika Dilday, Executive Director, American Documentary and Executive Producer, POV, and America ReFramed.

UNION made its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for the Art of Change. It made the Best Documentary Feature Shortlist for the 2025 Academy® Award, won the 2025 Cinema Eye Honors Production Award, and was a SIMA Impact Award Finalist in 2024. The film won Best Documentary Feature Audience Award at the Indie Memphis Film Festival (2024), the Change Award at the Adelaide Film Festival (2024), Best Canadian Pitch Prize at the Hot Docs Pitch Forum (2022) and has been featured at over 100 film festivals across the globe including: Sheffield DocFest (2024), CPH:DOX (2024), Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival (2024), True/False Film Fest (2024), Traverse City (2024), Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (2024), UnionAID New Zealand (2024), and the Austin Film Society (2024). Other key victories include winning the Maysles Documentary Center’s Albie Award (2024) and the Anthem Gold Award’s Film & Television (2024). The documentary also received nominations for Best Feature Documentary at the Gotham Awards (2024) and Direction at Cinema Eye Honors (2025).

Raves include:

"Richly observed.”

- Guy Lodge, VARIETY

"Has all the drama and intrigue that a narrative feature could offer.”

-Mia Galuppo, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

"’UNION' is a powerful reminder of what’s at stake when companies reduce workers to numbers on a balance sheet, with an uneasy resolution that underscores how far from over the struggle for change really is."

-Jen Yamato, LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Tough and gripping… In spite - or because - of how eagerly this film throws us into the frontlines and stays true to its on-the-ground perspective, a compelling David vs. Goliath story naturally emerges from watching the ALU race to become real."

-David Ehrlich, INDIEWIRE

UNION is a Level Ground production. The directors are Stephen Maing and Brett Story. Samantha Curley, Mars Verrone, Stephen Maing, Brett Story, and Martin DiCicco are the producers. Martin DiCicco and Stephen Maing are the cinematographers and Blair McClendon, Malika Zouhali-Worrall, and Stephen Maing are the editors. Music is by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. The executive producers are Jenny Raskin, Lauren Haber, Geralyn White Dreyfous, The Villa Family, David Levine, Jessica Grimshaw, Nick Shumaker, Dawn Olmstead, Adam McKay, Todd Schulman, Erika Dilday, and Chris White for American Documentary.

Photos

Download UNION photos.

Click UNION Press Kit to access the festival press notes.

Credits

Directors: Stephen Maing, Brett Story
Producers: Samantha Curley, Mars Verrone, Stephen Maing, Brett Story, and Martin DiCicco
Cast/Participants: Christian Smalls, Angelika Maldonado, Connor Spence, Derrick Palmer, Jason Anthony, Gerald Bryson, Jordan Flowers, Natalie Monarrez, Madeline Wesley
Executive Producers: Jenny Raskin, Lauren Haber, Geralyn White Dreyfous, The Villa Family, David Levine, Jessica Grimshaw, Nick Shumaker, Dawn Olmstead, Adam McKay, Todd Schulman, Erika Dilday and Chris White for American Documentary
Cinematographer: Martin DiCicco, Stephen Maing
Editors: Blair McClendon, Malika Zouhali-Worrall, Stephen Maing
Music: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
Language: English
Country: USA
Year: 2024

About the Filmmakers

Brett Story - Director, Producer, UNION

Brett Story is an award-winning filmmaker and writer whose work pushes the formal boundaries of political cinema. Her films have screened in theaters and festivals internationally, including at Sundance, CPH-DOX, and SXSW. She is the director of the feature films The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) and The Hottest August (2019), and the author of the book Prison Land (2019). The Hottest August was a New York Times Critics’ Pick and was called one of the best documentary films of 2019 by Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, among others. Brett has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Sundance Institute, and was named one of Variety's “10 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch.” In 2020, she was nominated for a Cinema Eye Award for Best Director. She holds a PhD in geography and is currently an assistant professor of Cinema at the University of Toronto.

Stephen Maing - Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Producer, UNION

Stephen Maing is an Emmy® Award-winning filmmaker based in New York. His feature documentary Crime + Punishment, which he directed, filmed, and edited, won a Special Jury Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, an Emmy® Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary, and was Shortlisted for the Academy Award® for Best Documentary. His previous films, High Tech, Low Life, and The Surrender, have screened internationally and were released on POV and Field of Vision, respectively. His films seek to expand the aesthetic form and limits of longitudinal nonfiction filmmaking and are visual investigations of societal phenomena and complex power structures. Maing is a 2021 United States Artists Fellow, Sundance Institute Fellow, NBC Original Voices Fellow, and a recipient of the IDA's prestigious Courage Under Fire Award shared with the whistleblowers of the NYPD12.

Samantha Curley, P.G.A. - Producer, UNION

Samantha Curley is an award-winning documentary film producer and creative entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. She is the Co-Founder of Level Ground, which is both a nonprofit artist collective and a documentary production company. She produced Framing Agnes (dir. Chase Joynt), which won the NEXT Innovator Award and Audience Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and the 2023 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary. She’s held fellowships with the Producers Guild of America, NBCU Original Voices, and Impact Partners. She received a Cali Catalyst award from the Center for Cultural Innovation (2023), was selected for DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 cohort (2024), and won a Cinema Eye Honors Award for Outstanding Achievement in Production (2025).

Mars Verrone, P.G.A. - Producer, UNION

Mars Verrone is a filmmaker, musician, and educator from Los Angeles, CA, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. In 2022, Mars directed and produced the award-winning short documentary Golden Voice, which continues to be programmed at LGBTQ+ festivals and events across the globe. Mars is a Sundance Documentary Producers Fellow, NBC Original Voices Artist Mentor and Fellow, PGA Create Fellow, Brown Girls Doc Mafia Sustainable Artist Fellow, Dear Producer Mentee, and was selected for DOC NYC’S 2024 “40 Under 40” cohort. Their work has been supported by Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, and the International Documentary Association, among others.

Martin DiCicco - Cinematographer, Producer, UNION

Martin DiCicco is a cinematographer and director whose work includes All That Passes By Through a Window That Doesn’t Open, Here There is No Earth, Girls Got Game, Searchers, The Hottest August, Landfall, and forthcoming films by Angelo Madsen Minax, Timothy George Kelly, and Jem Cohen.

Blair McClendon - Editor, UNION

Blair McClendon is a New York-based writer, film editor, and filmmaker. His films have screened at Sundance, Cannes, Tribeca, and TIFF, and include Aftersun, After Sherman, The Assistant, Mr. Soul!, Give Up the Ghost, and Walk for Mehas. Blair’s writing has been published in n+1, the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere.

Malika Zouhali-Worrall - Editor, UNION

Malika Zouhali-Worrall is a British/Moroccan editor and director based in New York. She most recently edited Through the Night (2020), which was a New York Times and Hollywood Reporter Critics' Pick, and was named as one of The Guardian’s Best Documentaries of 2020. An Emmy® Award-winning director, Malika's directing credits include Call Me Kuchu (2012), Thank You For Playing (2015), and Video Visit (2022). Her films have screened at the Berlin Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, True/False, AFI Festival, Blackstar, and SXSW, and broadcast on Netflix, the BBC, The New York Times, ART,E and PBS. Malika is a 2020 Sundance Momentum Fellow, a 2020 William Greaves Award recipient, and a 2021 Adobe Women at Sundance Fellow.

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - Composer, UNION

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe is an artist, curator, and composer who works primarily with, but not limited to, voice and modular synthesizer for sound works in the realm of spontaneous music. Along with analog video synthesis works, he has produced an A/V proposal that has been a focus of live performance and installation/exhibition. Recently, Robert has scored Candyman for Nia DaCosta, The Color of Care and Power for Yance Ford, Master for Mariama Diallo, Grasshopper Republic for Daniel McCabe, docuseries Telemarketers and UNION for Brett Story and Stephen Maing.

About

About POV

Produced by American Documentary, POV is the longest-running independent documentary showcase on American television. Since 1988, POV has presented films on PBS that capture the full spectrum of the human experience, with a long commitment to centering women and people of color in front of, and behind, the camera. The series is known for introducing generations of viewers to groundbreaking works like Tongues Untied (1989), Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1992), Rabbit in the Room (1999), Of Civil Wrongs & Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story (2001), Made in L.A. (2007), American Promise (2013), Not Going Quietly (2021), While We Watched (2022), A House Made of Splinters (2022), The Last Out (2023) and the mini-series And She Could be Next (2020). Throughout its history POV has featured the work of award-winning, innovative filmmakers including Jonathan Demme, Laura Poitras, Nanfu Wang, Frederick Wiseman, Emiko Omori, Janus Metz Pedersen and Ava DuVernay. In 2018, POV Shorts launched as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries. In 2024, Indiewire named seven POV films in its roundup of “The 50 Best Documentaries of the 21st Century”: Faya Dayi (2021), The Mole Agent (2020), Minding The Gap (2018), Cameraperson (2016), The Look of Silence (2015), The Act of Killing (2013) and After Tiller (2013). All POV programs are available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS App, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website.

POV goes “beyond the broadcast” to bring powerful nonfiction storytelling to viewers wherever they are. Free educational resources accompany every film and a community network of thousands of partners nationwide work with POV to spark dialogue around today’s most pressing issues. POV continues to explore the future of documentary through innovative productions with partners such as The New York Times and The National Film Board of Canada and on platforms including Instagram.

POV films and projects have won 50 Emmy Awards, 28 George Foster Peabody Awards, 16 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three Academy Awards® and the first-ever George Polk Documentary Film Award. Learn more at pbs.org/pov and follow @povdocs on social media.

About American Documentary, Inc.

American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia organization dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback to educational opportunities and community participation.

Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, the Open Society Foundations, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, Reva & David Logan Foundation, Park Foundation, and Perspective Fund. Additional funding comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Chris and Nancy Plaut, Acton Family Giving, and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.

About PBS

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