labor

77 movies and shows

The Wages of Fear

Wed, 22 Apr 1953

In a run-down South American town, four men are paid to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin into the jungle through to the oil field. Friendships are tested and rivalries develop as they embark upon the perilous journey.

The Paradise of Thorns

Thu, 22 Aug 2024

When his partner Sek dies, Thongkam loses his property to his late love's eager family and must fight to reclaim the home they built together.

Car Wash

Fri, 22 Oct 1976

This day-in-the-life cult comedy focuses on a group of friends working at Sully Boyar's Car Wash in the Los Angeles ghetto. The team meets dozens of eccentric customers -- including a smooth-talking preacher, a wacky cab driver and an ex-convict -- while cracking politically incorrect jokes to a constant soundtrack of disco and funk. Some of the workers find romance as the day moves along, but most are just happy to get through another shift.

Norma Rae

Fri, 02 Mar 1979

Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory.

Crude Oil

Thu, 17 Jan 2008

Filmed in the Inner Mongolian portion of the Gobi Desert, this film follows a group of oil field workers as they go about their daily routine.

Harlan County U.S.A.

Sun, 23 Jan 1977

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastover's refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.

Ip Man 2

Thu, 29 Apr 2010

Having defeated the best fighters of the Imperial Japanese army in occupied Shanghai, Ip Man and his family settle in post-war Hong Kong. Struggling to make a living, Master Ip opens a kung fu school to bring his celebrated art of Wing Chun to the troubled youth of Hong Kong. His growing reputation soon brings challenges from powerful enemies, including pre-eminent Hung Gar master, Hung Quan.

Youth (Spring)

Fri, 10 Nov 2023

This film was shot between 2014 and 2019 in the town of Zhili, a district of Huzhou City in Zhejiang province, China. Zhili is home to over 18,000 privately-run workshops producing children's clothes, mostly for the domestic market, but some also for export. The workshops employ around 300,000 migrant workers, chiefly from the rural provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan and Jiangsu.

Convicts

Tue, 01 Jan 1991

In 1902, 13-year-old Horace toils on a run-down plantation in rural Texas to buy a tombstone for the father he lost a year earlier. Soll, the crusty old Confederate who owns the plantation and depends on convict labor to keep his farm running, takes a liking to Horace. However, Soll is aging and sinking into senility, making the possibility of Horace ever getting his pay increasingly unlikely. On Christmas Eve, as Soll becomes obsessed with his own mortality, he makes a grand promise... forcing Horace to confront his fear of death and the harsh truths of a decadent society.

Walkout: The School Funding Rebellion

Tue, 17 Apr 2018

The lowest paid teachers in the nation are in the middle of a statewide walkout in Oklahoma. From start to finish, Walkout follows the teachers as they get organized and demand raises from their state legislature. From crowded classrooms to a packed state capitol, Walkout offers an in-depth, personal look at the latest strike at the heart of a nationwide movement for education funding.

Doi Boy

Sat, 07 Oct 2023

Sorn, an ethnic Shan sex worker, tries to build a future in Chiang Mai, Thailand, as a refugee far from home, but he is drawn into a complex relationship with one client, an investigator probing a political activist.

WALKA!

Thu, 18 Jul 2024

France: 2020s. Piotr, a young Polish immigrant stuck in a string of odd jobs, crosses paths with Stefano, a burly mover. Little did Piotr know, this encounter would soon draw him into the eerie world of nighttime fighting.

Footsteps

Sat, 08 Oct 2022

In Footsteps, Fiona Tan creates connections between personal stories and the world around us. The footage shows children at play and Dutch windmills, but above all people engaged in heavy physical labour in the countryside and in factories. In a fascinating juxtaposition, she combines these images with excerpts from letters she received from her father just after she moved to the Netherlands in the late 1980s. Through his education in Indonesia, Tan’s father knew a lot about the Netherlands without ever having visited the country. In the letters, he meanders seamlessly between personal news and world events, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.

Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven

Mon, 07 Jul 1975

Frau Emma Küsters prepares dinner late one seemingly-ordinary afternoon in her seemingly-ordinary Frankfurt kitchen. She wants to add canned sausages to the stew; her irritating daughter-in-law thinks otherwise. But the point is moot: Ernst Küsters has not only murdered the personnel director at the soap factory where he's employed but succeeded that by committing suicide.

Homebound

Wed, 31 Aug 2022

Through first person narration, Tari reveals personal stories related to her decision to work in Taiwan, her strained family relationships, the risks involved in working abroad and the traps she has fallen into.

Open files

Wed, 01 Jan 1975

A more experimental aproach to labor protection films. In the line of Săucan's style, the soundtrack is as important as the image, the threatening music, full of shrillness, composed by Ion Dumitrescu potentiating the visual construction that mixes - in a montage reminiscent of the Soviet avant-garde school of the 1920s - all kinds of shooting techniques and frame combinations.

A Better Place

Fri, 02 May 2025

Ching-Chun, Nguyễn and Mei are both international students from Vietnam to Taiwan; however the reality is so different from what was anticipated. There seems to be no differentiation between international students and migrant helpers. Determined to have a different path, Ching-Chun, Nguyễn tries to transfer schools in hopes of a better opportunity and future; nonetheless, all in vain.