Brett Story

Directing

Brett Story

Brett Story is a geographer and award-winning non-fiction filmmaker. Her films have screened at True/False, Oberhausen, Hot Docs, the Viennale, and Dok Leipzig, among other international festivals. Her second feature-length film, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and was a nominee for Best Canadia…

Known For

The CastleThe Castle · 2018
The Castle
2018
MovieDocumentary
Formerly incarcerated people reassemble their lives at The Castle, a singular housing facility and a supportive home base created by The Fortune Society.
To Use a MountainTo Use a Mountain · 2025
To Use a Mountain
2025
MovieDocumentary
Six rural American communities are marked as candidates for an unthinkable fate: their land, a burial ground for 77,000 tons of nuclear waste. Against the impassive logic of government analysis and archives, a people’s history of resistance and stewardship emerges through a visceral journey across the landscapes, ecologies, and personal histories of the candidate sites.
Local OneLocal One · 2025
Local One
2025
MovieDocumentary
An exploration into the first days of the strike at two Amazon warehouses in New York City.
UnionUnion · 2024
Union
★ 7.72024
MovieDocumentary
Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York.
The Hottest AugustThe Hottest August · 2019
The Hottest August
★ 5.72019
MovieDocumentary
Brett Story's visionary look at New York City as it braces for an uncertain future.
Car WashCar Wash · 2008
Car Wash
★ 7.02008
MovieDocumentary
In the spring of 2008, car wash workers throughout Los Angeles formed the Carwash Workers Organizing Committee of the United Steelworkers (USW), a precursor to eventual plans to unionize the informal workers of a multi-million dollar industry rampant with exploitation. Most of these workers are undocumented migrants from Central America whose aspirations have led them to washing cars in the city of angels. This experimental documentary, shot on Super 8 film, journeys into a city defined by as much by cars as it is immigrant labor to offer a quiet commentary on the relationship between class, place, and work.
David Harvey and the CityDavid Harvey and the City · 2020
David Harvey and the City
2020
MovieDocumentary
David Harvey discusses the spatial aspects of capital, his work in the US, and the development of Hudson Yards.
A Debtors' PrisonA Debtors' Prison · 2018
A Debtors' Prison
2018
MovieDocumentary
In St. Louis County, the home of police-shooting victim Michael Brown, a practice with a long history has become systematic: the operation of modern-day debtors’ prisons. A Debtors' Prison follows two plaintiffs in an unfolding court case, Samantha Jenkins and Meredith Walker, as they describe the matrix of controls that subjected them to incarceration for being poor.

Filmography

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Land of DestinyLand of Destiny · 2010
Land of Destiny
2010
MovieDocumentary
A portrait of work, landscape and community in an era of globalization. In the rich fabric of Sarnia, Ontario's landscape— the bright sprawl of petrochemical plants, swollen hospital wards and crowded bars— one finds a microcosm of the 21st century. Tattooed men serving fries, basement musicians, boilermakers and volunteer firemen, heartbroken widows and an optimistic mayor - the lives of a diverse medley of characters intersect to reveal the dramas and contradictions of an industrial town out of sync with a post-industrial world. As the dystopian architecture of the petrochemical plants, squatted like crushed space stations just meters away from homes and schoolyards, give way to the spaces that make this city a community, we begin to see what it is that everyone seems so afraid to lose. Land of Destiny is a tender portrait of a working-class city in paralysis and a devastating investigation into when and for what people fight for.

Producer