UNION: Part 2 on Art, Activism, and the Battle for Fair Wages for Film Workers Too

The beating heart of UNION is the creative choice to make art about labor. But did they make money doing it?

Jun 26, 2025

UNION film team and subjects at Sundance 2024 (© 2024 Sundance Institute | Photo by Jovelle Tamayo Courtesy of Sundance Institute)

UNION is available now on PBS to watch!

Welcome to Part 2 of my two part deep dive on UNION.

Read Part 1 on how the film team developed and crafted Union into a documentary that tells the story of the Amazon Labor Union.

Now, Part 2 of my series on UNION shifts focus to the self-release, the film’s financial story, and more from director Stephen Maing and producer Samantha Curley on the labor of making documentaries.

Their honest and not all unhopeful thoughts surprised, shocked and delighted me!

"The act of forming a union is very much like making a film. There's this idea that together we can achieve very new and meaningful things that perhaps we haven't even seen before."

-Steve Maing, Director UNION

"Solidarity between workers is incredibly powerful, incredibly threatening to the power structure... As independent artists, the ways that we see the world gives us the ability to imagine a different future."

-Samantha Curley, Producer UNION

Even after a triumphant film festival run, the film never got a major offer from a corporate entertainment company for distribution. (Credit: UNION)

THE AFTERMATH OF NOT SELLING A FILM

Of course, filmmakers and investors hope their film will be picked up by a big buyer when it premieres. But a less discussed and also vitally important point is that subjects do too. When filmmakers negotiate access with subjects, part of their pitch is often about the positive impact the film will have once their story is out in the world. But that can only happen if people see the film!

The subjects of UNION of course knew that the film did not sell at Sundance or soon afterwards. Indeed, producer Samantha Curley shared that:

"Many of them have been asking for years, 'Is the film gonna be on Netflix?'"

250 SCREENINGS LATER… NO HELP NEEDED

UNION was uniquely set up to tackle the organizational and movement-building skills needed to get their film out there. They were never going to let a lack of corporate interest in the project deter them from finding their audience elsewhere. So what do we call what they did? Independent distribution makes it sound like they didn’t rely anyone. But it was more than that. They like the term ‘self-distribution’ since it explains that filmmakers literally did it all themselves from raising the money post-premiere to pay for distribution costs from filling seats to setting up screenings.

Maing explains:

"What was great about what Curley and Mars Verrone (UNION producer) led our team to prove is that people want to see a film like this. They want to see different kinds of nonfiction offerings. This film was not, as we understood, for everyone in terms of what the market, the streamers and the studios want. But UNION was Oscar-shortlisted. We have proven that there is a lot of interest in watching a film like this. We just need to keep trying to reassert the value of what we bring."

Producer Samantha Curley's brilliant breakdown of their self-distribution strategy for Distribution Advocates reveals the nuts and bolts of their process to bring the film to audiences. So here I am going to summarize their work.

Audiences, Impact, and Awards

They parlayed a healthy festival run into multiple self-booked theatrical screenings, a limited run online with GATHR, an awards campaign, and countless impact and community screenings.

The film’s impact is real. The subjects have used the film themselves to support their mission and are thankful for the work it does to show those outside the movement their story. "Organizers have come up to us and said, thank you for showing the world both how hard and complicated organizing can be and how meaningful and needed it is," Maing shared.

So by many measures, the film ended up being a success, and now POV is a wonderful home for the film. The subjects were happy, even though it wasn't Netflix. "I think that this is a huge testament to public broadcasting. Everybody in the film has some knowledge or relationship to PBS programming, so they understand," Curley told me. "The first thing they asked was, 'Will we get to find out how many people watch it?'"

Did All of This WORK Make Money for Anyone?

By the time they wrapped production, the budget for the film ended up being $1.4 million. The film was ultimately funded through grants from Ford Foundation | Just Films, Omidyar Network, Catapult Film Fund, Field of Vision, International Documentary Association, Sundance Institute, and NBCU Academy. They also raised equity from a number of sources, including Impact Partners.

But now Curley says she would not let a documentary's production budget number go that high. Belts are tighter across the board- especially with cute to government grants. The market isn't there for these types of stories anymore. Curley broke it down like this:

"It's unrealistic to try and raise a $1.4M production budget philanthropically, certainly right now, maybe ever. And the market isn't buying docs in a way that I think justifies taking on the amount of equity required to get to that budget."

A VERY CANDID BREAKDOWN OF THE MONEY

So the film did not make back its costs from production and distribution. Fortunately for us, Curley did share a real breakdown on the financials of UNION:

"We raised $400,000 philanthropically for our impact and distribution campaign — which is about half of what we wanted to raise to do everything we had planned while also paying ourselves for 18 months of distribution labor. To date, we've grossed about 75% of our distribution costs in revenue. To be frank, even the most successful of independent distribution campaigns are unlikely to cover the costs of distribution, let alone your production budget. It's of course not impossible, and there will always be exceptions, but it's important for filmmakers and funders to have realistic expectations here.
Per our contractual agreements with our equity investors, all of our distribution revenue (even from independent distribution) is going into our CAMA. Because it is unlikely that we will repay our investors in full, and the film team was working for free for so much of our independent distribution campaign (again, because we didn't raise our full budget), we were able to set up a corridor in the CAMA so that the filmmaker pool receives some money as our distribution revenue repays investors."

What is a realistic independent documentary budget now?

Here is a key piece of advice for producers right now.

Do not bet on your film being bought by one distributor at a level that will make you whole. Those all-rights deals are few and far between for most indie documentaries. Prepare for self-releasing your film, selling rights in a piecemeal fashion by territory and type, and handling the marketing yourself along the way.

So as you build your budget, include the distribution and marketing numbers in the total from day one. Make sure everyone involved knows there are two different scenarios for how your film might come out: A sale to a one-stop-shop distributor OR self-distribution and selling rights piecemeal.

If you take on equity financing for production, you need to contemplate how revenue will be handled for both scenarios. Curley advises, "If you take on equity, you need to think about having a filmmaker corridor in the case that a film has to be self-distributed. How is revenue from self-distribution going to be handled if the film doesn't sell?"

Billionaires and Free Labor

While I was interviewing Curley and Maing, they made an important point about the not-very-favorable working conditions of the humans who make documentaries. "The reality is we are reliant on billionaire funding and free labor," Curley said. "It is as true for us as filmmakers, as it is for the workers trying to organize. Are you willing to work for free and in what capacity?"

The truth is that making a documentary is nowhere near as grueling as working in an Amazon warehouse. But we do often work for free or very little to make these films.

When I entered the field in the mid-2000s, I did work for free a lot but eventually I found entry-level paid work. (My first paid gig was for Jehane Noujaim. Thanks, dear!) Back then, it did seem plausible that one could build a career and support oneself for the long run making documentaries. But not anymore. The most recent nail in the coffin is A24's closure of its documentary division in May 2025. I could write a long list right here of brilliant, experienced documentary workers whose labor is no longer valuable enough in the marketplace to get paid. Maing, who is my professional contemporary, explains this predicament perfectly,

"Reaching a high point in my career and creativity, but also having the most financial and future uncertainty, is a paradox for many of us. I don't encourage people to go into documentaries if they seek stability — it's gotta be a calling you feel like you just can't ignore."

Curley, who is newer to the space than Maing and me, has different expectations about her career in documentary.

"I've never thought that being a documentary filmmaker could be a full-time job, nor has it ever been for me. So in terms of a healthy budget or a reasonable budget, as a producer, when I'm thinking about projects that are my own and my collaborators' passion projects, I'm seeing more and more that there's just not a lot of money above the line. And that if you can get a project made for as little on the expense side as possible and retain ownership of your project, to me, that feels like one way forward."

The number of jobs, films and opportunities for us are shrinking by the day. Curley also sees a glut of projects right now trying to access the same dwindling pool of resources. "I see a lot of projects right now that I'm like, I don't think you're ever gonna get the rest of your funding. The field has this huge number of projects that are just in this funding limbo. Honestly, what good is a $10,000 grant? What is the strategy here on the part of funders? Does it help us to have thousands of projects that are 10% of the way done and won't have the opportunity to cross the finish line?"

As we all face the cold hard reality of making documentaries right now, we all have different answers on how to manage these financial pressures. Luckily, organizations are still fighting to keep the documentary world going. From the IDA thinking of starting an industry-wide union to all of the grant-making organizations from Catalyst, Sandbox and Firelight to Chicken & Egg, Ford JustFilms, Sundance Institute and more there are still orgs standing by us.

I have heard funders are talking about how to meet this moment in different ways. There are no easy answers, just compromises. For example, if they fund more projects fully, there will be less work overall getting made. Also, if funders make fewer bets, they will want those to be safe bets on experienced teams. That makes it tough to support giving opportunities to new voices.

Are shorts the answer?

As the former executive producer of The New York Times Op-Docs, I know the power and reach of short films. I have seen careers launched, films get millions of views, and win awards. One Op-Doc, Transgender, At War and In Love, even helped to change the Pentagon's policy on transgender service members (it has now been sadly overturned).

The reality is that shorts are cheaper and faster to make. And they can still have a mega impact without the time and expense of a feature. (Reach out if you want to talk about shorts in my subscriber chat. Working on some ideas in this area… Also check out DocHouse's shorts summit.) Curley also sees shorts as an avenue for documentaries.

"In documentaries, we're so used to raising money as we go. And what happens if you start production and then hit a fundraising wall? What are you gonna do? What are the options? What are the escape plans? Make it a short. I feel like it's gonna be easier for filmmakers to raise a hundred thousand dollars and get paid something to make a short, than it will be to try and raise half a million dollars to make a feature and not be able to pay themselves anything."

HOPE THROUGH COLLABORATION

Even in these tough times, Curley's vision for the future is not bleak.

"Solidarity between workers is incredibly powerful, incredibly threatening to the power structure... Organized labor is maybe one of the last strongholds we have to build power back... As independent artists, the ways that we see the world gives us the ability to imagine a different future."

We also have the skillset to change things. "We've had to learn how to build partnerships," said Curley, "garner resources, share and leverage those resources and relationships, get people on board, activate them, communicate with them, build campaigns." Maing is also more sanguine about the future than the present.

"Marx wrote about the intentional alienation of individuals from the products of their labor. We're seeing that everywhere — how devalued people feel in their work, which by design creates a helplessness and social control. But also, there's a glimmer that history has shown us: when people remember they are part of a community with shared experiences, they're inspired to think beyond their own needs and fight for the greater good."

In UNION we watched as current and former Amazon workers handed out hot dogs and flyers to fight Amazon. In the end, they won one of the biggest victories in the history of the labor movement.

Can filmmakers find a way to change our working conditions next?

Ok, time for a check in. Don't despair.

Leave comments here — let's talk it out.

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