American Dream

Barbara Kopple won her second Academy Award for American Dream, which chronicles the explosive 1985–86 strike against the Hormel meat packing plant in Austin, Minnesota. Fed up with decreasing wages and increasingly unsafe conditions at the plant, the local union went on strike, a decision that ran counter to the national union’s strategy. When replacements begin to be hired, the union found itself caught between a once-progressive company that had been central to the city’s economic well-being for decades and the national union leaders who seemed to have priorities other than the workers' livelihoods. (98 mins., 4K DCP)

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American Dream, courtesy of Janus Films.