Film
9to5: The Story of a Movement
This is oral history at its liveliest — Jane Fonda's producer's-eye view of the real secretaries who turned petty daily indignities into a national movement. Talking-head interviews sit alongside gleeful archive footage and a real sense of mischief. It's activist history told with warmth rather than reverence, more rousing pep talk than sober lecture, for anyone who wants proof that ordinary rage, organized well, actually moves things.
If you liked this
Nine to Five1980
The blockbuster comedy this real story directly inspired — Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton turning office rage into slapstick revenge fantasy, complete with the song you've been humming all day.
But It's broad, silly, and a little dated in its jokes — pure entertainment, not the sharp policy history the documentary gives you.
Made in Dagenham2010
British women machinists walk out over unequal pay in 1968 and accidentally change the law. Same stubbornness, same coffee-break plotting, same satisfaction watching bosses squirm.
But It smooths some real history into crowd-pleasing shape, and the tone stays gentler than the movement it depicts probably felt.
Norma Rae1979
Sally Field's Oscar-winning textile worker builds a union from nothing, one exhausted, furious conversation at a time. The blueprint for every workplace organizing story that followed.
But It's a slow, talky drama from another era — no jokes, no needle drops, just grinding persistence.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Salt of the Earth1954
Same insistence that women's grievances inside a labor dispute are not a subplot but the point — just filmed twenty years earlier, under far greater risk to everyone involved.
Made by blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers using real miners and their wives as actors, this quietly radical drama about a New Mexico strike gives its women equal billing in the fight — decades before anyone used the word 'movement.'
But It's plain, low-budget, and unmistakably a product of 1950s political filmmaking — didactic in ways modern audiences may find stiff.
More like this (8)
She's Beautiful When She's Angry2014no page yet
A wider-lens documentary on the same feminist decade, tracking the fractures and alliances inside the women's movement that 9 to 5's organizers were also navigating.
But It covers a lot of ground quickly and assumes some familiarity with the era's politics already.
Dolores2017no page yet
Dolores Huerta co-founded the farmworkers' movement and got erased from its history anyway. This corrects the record with the same clear-eyed admiration 9 to 5 has for its overlooked women.
But It's righteously angry in places and doesn't pretend to balance — you're here to be convinced, not debated with.
Mrs. America2020
A starry miniseries dramatizing the ERA fight of the same decade, with Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly and a bench of great actresses playing the feminists opposing her.
But It's soapier and more personality-driven than the grassroots story here — more about famous women clashing than ordinary ones organizing.
RBG2018
Ruth Bader Ginsburg's own quiet, decades-long campaign against workplace discrimination, told with the same affection and archival delight this film brings to its secretaries.
But It's a hagiography, essentially, and doesn't push very hard against its subject.
American Factory2019
A Chinese-owned factory reopens in Ohio and the culture clash exposes exactly what workers are up against decades after 9 to 5's secretaries won their first fights.
But It's quieter and sadder than you might expect, with no tidy victory at the end.
On the Basis of Sex2018
A courtroom drama following young RBG's first sex-discrimination case, for anyone who wants the legal machinery behind the era's workplace battles spelled out clearly.
But It's conventional, safe biopic filmmaking — competent rather than exciting.
Sorry to Bother You2018
Same engine — ordinary workers organizing against a company that treats them as disposable — run through absurdist comedy instead of earnest history, proving the anger translates into almost any register.
A telemarketer discovers his 'white voice' gets him promoted, and the satire spirals into surreal, gleefully trashy territory while never losing sight of who's actually being exploited and why.
But It gets genuinely bizarre in its back half — this is not a subtle or realistic film, and some will find it too much.
Mad Men2007
Peggy Olson's climb through Sterling Cooper is the fictional shadow of exactly the world these real secretaries were rebelling against — same starting point, opposite response.
The glossy inverse of this documentary: a prestige drama that lives inside the same offices, the same decade, the same secretarial pool, but from the perspective of the men who never noticed anything was wrong.
But It's a long, slow-burn character drama with little interest in activism — if you want the fight, you'll have to imagine it happening off-screen.
People
Cast
Jane FondaSelf- Karen NussbaumSelf
Directing
- Julia ReichertDirector
- Steven BognarDirector
Production
- Julia ReichertProducer
- Steven BognarProducer