Matewan

Director: John Sayles

1987 / 135min / 4K DCP

Stunningly photographed by cinematographer Haskell Wexler, Sayles’s furiously present-tense period piece, inspired by the events of the 1920 West Virginia Mine War, depicts the clashes between union organizers and mining companies in a backwater coal town, where the bosses have conspired to sow disunity among their workers by pitting newly arrived Black migrants and Italian immigrants against the community’s longtime residents. A stirring, ballad-like epic of American Dreams deferred, boasting a uniformly exceptional ensemble cast, with James Earl Jones appearing alongside Sayles regulars Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, and Mary McDonnell.