'We are not doing political films': Why award-winning documentaries are being frozen out

A modern David and Goliath story blazed through the film festival circuit last year: Union, a documentary about a group of Amazon workers fighting to unionize a warehouse of one of the biggest companies in the world.

Now, Union is on the Oscar short list for best documentary feature — but, like several others on that list, you won't find it on a major American streaming platform. 

"The big streamers — Hulu and Netflix specifically — they were pretty blunt," Brett Story, who co-directed Union with Stephen Maing, told CBC News. "They said, 'We are not doing social issue documentary. We are not doing political films.'"

Neither Hulu nor Netflix responded to CBC News's request for comment.

Story isn't the only filmmaker navigating what she sees as political and corporate roadblocks. 

There's also No Other Land, which documents Palestinian resistance in Masafer Yatta, a community in the occupied West Bank that the Israeli military has gradually destroyed. Despite debuting to acclaim last year, it too has been unable to find U.S. distribution deals.

"I read it as something that's completely political," Yuval Abraham, one of the filmmakers, told Variety last week. 

In a media landscape increasingly characterized by fewer options and more powerful corporate interests, films that push boundaries and challenge power are becoming harder for the general public to easily access, industry experts say. 

Union follows a group of Amazon workers on Staten Island, N.Y., as they embark on an 11-month battle to unionize their warehouse.

The film saw critical buzz, appearing at more than 100 festivals worldwide and winning prizes including at Sundance Film Festival.

But that didn't materialize into sales, Story said. 

She said some distributors expressed to her privately that they were afraid of jeopardizing their relationship with Amazon MGM Studios if they took it.

"Our film is about a group of ordinary people that take on a big tech company and win.

"Despite that being something audiences want to see, there's a lot of corporate interests that don't want that story to get out."