Eight women in America’s heartland are driven by gender discrimination to picket the bank where they work, in the dead of a Minnesota winter. Risking jobs and their place in the community, the Willmar 8 began the longest bank strike in American history in an attempt to assert their equality.

Charting a pivotal strike for pay equality in the late 1970s, Lee Grant’s first documentary astutely contextualizes labor justice within the fight for female empowerment. In the face of sexist workplace practices and uncaring state institutions, the resilience of the picketers left a lasting legacy.