The Obama-produced ‘American Factory’ wins Oscar for best documentary feature

The first Netflix film American Factory produced by Barack and Michelle Obama‘s production company Higher Ground has won the Oscar for best documentary feature at the Academy Awards.

The film highlights the reopening of a shuttered factory in Ohio by a Chinese billionaire.

Julia Reichert who accepted the award praised her fellow nominees for their bravery.

“Just being in the presence, in the company of our sister and brother documentarians who risked their lives making stories, bring stories to us about hospitals being bombed in Syria, about Brazil, about Macedonia — we were so proud,” she said.

Reichert explained that while their film is from both Ohio and China, it could apply to all people who “put on a uniform, punch a clock, trying to make their families have a better life.”

“Working people have it harder and harder these days, and we believe that things will get better when workers of the world unite,” she said.

American Factory follows the lives of thousands of workers who were laid off from their auto jobs in Moraine, Ohio, in the 2008 recession. Some of those workers were hired six years later by Chinese company Fuyao Glass America to make automotive glass in the same plant.

You may recall that just recently, Michelle Obama made the headlines when she won a Grammy award for the audio book of her memoir Becoming.