2025 Rochester Labor Film Series
September 5 - October 31
All films shown at:
Eastman Museum - Dryden Theater
900 East Avenue
Rochester, NY 14607
Friday, September 5, 7:30 p.m.
LILLY
(Rachel Feldman, US 2024, 93 min.)
Lilly depicts the remarkable true story of Lilly Ledbetter’s fight against her employer, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, for sexual harassment and pay discrimination over a period of nearly 20 years. Her yearslong persistence in the courts and Congress led to the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 that removes unfair obstacles for filing discrimination charges. As Feldman states, “This is a movie for this moment. It offers inspiration. It tells a story of an ordinary person who does an extraordinary thing, and it proves that one person truly can make a difference.” Based on Ledbetter’s autobiography, Grace and Grit, it stars Patricia Clarkson and includes several archived film clips of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
Friday, September 12, 7:30 p.m.
SOULEYMANE'S STORY
(Boris Lojkine, France 2024, 93 min., French, Fulah, Malinka with English subtitles)
Set in Paris, this award-winning, fast-paced thriller is a compassionate account of a young Guinean asylum seeker, Souleymane (Abou Sangaré). He struggles to meet the merciless demands of his food delivery cycling gig, his fellow immigrant cheats, and the French immigration bureaucracy, while simultaneously preparing for his make-or-break interview for legal residency. Sangaré, himself an actual asylum seeker and first-time actor, won the 2024 Best Actor award in the Cannes Un Certain Regard, and received legal status in France only after the film opened.
Friday, September 19, 7:30 p.m.
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK
(George Clooney, US 2005, 93 min.)
George Clooney directs and co-stars in this captivating story of legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn), focusing on the exposé by Murrow and his CBS television staff—defended by CBS—that helped lead to the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Clearly a film that speaks to our times, it serves as an inspiration for serious journalism to stand up to the brazen lies, baseless allegations and bullying of today’s McCarthys and their toadies. With Patricia Clarkson and Robert Downey Jr.
Friday, September 26, 7:30 p.m.
A THOUSAND PINES
(Sebastian Diaz Aguirre and Noam Osband, US 2023, 77 min., Spanish and English with subtitles)
This moving documentary follows a crew of twelve Oaxacan guest workers doing the back-breaking work of hand-planting pine seedlings throughout the US for eight months for one of the country’s biggest forestry companies. Using a method that this company boasts “allows a worker to plant trees almost as fast as he can walk,” each worker is expected to plant thousands of pine seedlings a day while living cheek by jowl in cheap motels across many states. Their pay, while low in the U.S., provides a better life for their families back home in rural Mexico, but the toll on workers’ physical and mental wellbeing is poignantly revealed.
Friday, October 3, 7:30 p.m.
THE LIBRARIANS
(Kim Snyder, US 2025, 88 min.)
They’re called pedophiles and they’re charged with pushing books that shame whites and indoctrinate kids for LGBTQ. Some are fired while others get death threats and face arrest. They are public-school librarians. This maddening but necessary documentary gives an up-close look at an occupation under siege by politicians and organizations fueling the war on books and “wokeness,” and the librarians who fight to maintain their personal integrity, their profession’s code of ethics and ultimately intellectual freedom for all of us.
Friday, October 10, 7:30 p.m.
EAST OF WALL
(Kate Beecroft, US 2025, 97 min.)
Beautifully shot in the Badlands of South Dakota, this docu-fiction is an authentic portrait of women’s resilience in the “New West.” Rugged and recently-widowed rancher Tabatha Zimiga and her daughter Porshia (playing themselves), break in horses to sell at auctions and via TikTok while simultaneously providing refuge for local wayward teens. The ranch is torn by family conflict and financial stress, and an outsider poses a solution.
Friday, October 17, 7:30 p.m.
LA COCINA
(Alonso Ruizpalacios, US 2024, 139 min.)
Adapted from the 1957 play, The Kitchen, La Cocina takes us to the “back of the house” of a Times Square eatery where the frenetic, alienating and exploited work of the immigrant cooks is invisible to the mostly tourist diners and the City depending on it. The cramped kitchen is a battleground of rivalries and conflicts between the cooks, between cooks and servers, and between management and undocumented workers. On top of it all, a large sum of money goes missing from the till. In the off-peak hours when the workers can share their dreams, we see the source of their persistence.
Friday, October 24, 7:30 p.m.
ANYWHERE ANYTIME
(Milad Tangshir, Italy, 2024, 82 min., Italian and Wolof with English subtitles)
Contemporary experiences of undocumented immigrants in Italy are poignantly portrayed in this story of a young Senegalese immigrant, Issa (Ibrahima Sambou). Issa’s hopes for work and remittance for his family fall squarely on securing a bicycle when he has a chance to do gig work as a food delivery rider in the streets of Torino. But, the entwined obstacles of the precarity of work, racism and his undocumented status are behind each of Issa’s decisions in getting and holding on to the bike.
Friday, October 31, 7:30 p.m.
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
(Boots Riley, US 2018, 112 min)
This satire on phone-sales work, race, corporate greed, and the follies of capitalist culture begins with a struggling young black man, Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) who takes work as a telemarketer. With help from his co-worker Langston (Danny Glover), Cassius finds the trick to making mega sales. What follows is a string of wild events that not only tests Cassius’ loyalty to his friends, coworkers and to his own principles, it also exposes him to his employer’s sinister fantasy fit for Halloween. As described by the director, it’s “an absurdist dark comedy with magical realism and science fiction inspired by the world of telemarketing.”
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