Barbara Kopple

Barbara Kopple is an American film director known primarily for her documentary work. She is credited with pioneering a renaissance of cinema vérité, and bringing the historic French style to a modern American audience. Known for her "fly-on-the-wall" filmmaking style, Kopple captured raw, real-life events without interrupting the action. She has won two Academy Awards, for Harlan County, USA (1976), about a Kentucky miners' strike, and for American Dream (1990), the story of the 1985–86 Hormel strike in Austin, Minnesota, making her the first woman to win two Oscars in the Best Documentary category.