John Sayles is one of the more quietly successful independent filmmakers of the past forty years, translating the ruminative nature and winding rhythms usually associated with novels onto celluloid with films such as The Return of the Secaucus 7, The Secret of Roan Inish, and Lone Star. Sayles has crafted one of the most politically infused filmographies of his generation, bringing an explicitly left-wing framework — without sacrificing nuanced characterization or dramatic verve — to topics as varied as immigration and racial identity in The Brother From Another Planet, class relations in Baby It’s You, and the crimes of US empire in Men With Guns and Amigo.

Near the top of the list sits Matewan, Sayles’s 1987 fictionalization of the 1920 Matewan Massacre — a gun battle between striking coal miners and Baldwin-Felts agents representing the coal company in Matewan, West Virginia that left ten dead. The incident — occurring amid a wave of labor militancy among the state’s coal miners — triggered a series of events that led to the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed labor revolt in US history.

Starring Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, Will Oldham, and David Strathairn, Matewan stands alongside Salt of the Earth, Norma Rae, Sorry to Bother You, and The Killing Floor as one of the few unambiguously pro-labor American films. It also happens to be spectacular.