In 1989, Mark Mori screened his documentary “Building Bombs,” which he co-directed with Susan Robinson, at what was then called the Atlanta Film & Video Festival. Now, 37 years later, he has a new film playing at the 50th Atlanta Film Festival.
The Georgia State University grad’s new film is called “Baristas v. Billionaires,” a documentary that documents the struggles of Starbucks baristas as they try to unionize against a company that seems determined to fight them every step of the way. The film will play the festival on April 28 at the Tara Theatre.
Head of the screening, Mori’s earlier film “Building Bombs” – which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards – will play as a retrospective. This version of “Building Bombs” is a digital 4K restoration, courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.
“It’s the same film, but it just looks and sounds much better, much crisper,” Mori said about the restoration. “I’m really happy with it.”
For Mori, his new film has a personal bent. He used to work at Atlantic Steel in Atlanta and is a former member of the steel workers union, so he knows firsthand how important unions can be. He first got the idea for the film while attending an organizing drive at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island. While there, he started hearing about similar efforts of Starbucks baristas.
“The Amazon guys already had their movie being made about them, so I focused on Starbucks,” he said.
“Baristas v. Billionaires” focuses on the national unionization efforts of Starbucks workers through the lens of the store that started it all. The Starbucks Workers United movement in Buffalo, New York in 2021. Throughout the documentary, Mori speaks with workers from Buffalo and other union strongholds in the country about how working conditions at stores worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic – low wages, short staffing, and unpredictable scheduling were all part of the problem.
“It started at a single Starbucks store in Buffalo – the Elmwood Avenue store – and that’s all they expected, was to organize one store,” Mori said. “But the moment was so ready, it mushroomed into this big movement, now with more than 12,000 members and something like 700 stores.”
Mori said he reached out to Starbucks multiple times to ask if they wanted to be included in the documentary, but the company declined.
“Fortunately for us, there were a lot of interviews with [former CEO] Howard Schultz on television,” Mori said. “We accessed those, so he’s very prominent in the film, and I think sort of drops the rock on his own foot, if I can put it that way.”
According to the workers in the documentary, as soon as murmurings of unionization started to crop up at their stores, Starbucks started pushing back. In Memphis, a group that came to be known as the Memphis Seven, were fired after they attempted to unionize their chain (For its part, Starbucks said they were fired for violating company rules by inviting a news crew into the store). In one instance in late 2021, Schultz gave a speech to workers in Buffalo insinuating that the workers didn’t need to unionize because of Starbucks’ progressive company culture (in that speech, he drew parallels between Starbucks workers and Holocaust prisoners).
As of Oct. 28, 2025, the National Labor Relations Board had filed almost 200 consolidated complaints against Starbucks in connection with the organizing drives, with multiple employees alleging they had been fired for trying to unionize. Co-producer Dennis LA White was drawn to the project by those baristas and their stories.
“I really believed in the project,” White said. “It was a passion that I felt, that permeated through the screen from Mark and those involved. I needed to be a part of this and help bring this project to fruition.”
The film originally premiered at the Buffalo International Film Festival in 2025. White said it was an emotional experience, particularly given the fact that so many of the baristas featured in the film attended the screening.
“To be able to create a project that affects people emotionally, not just because of art but also because of their livelihood, was such an amazing experience,” he said.
Despite their efforts and the unionization of hundreds of stores, Starbucks workers in the U.S. still do not have a company-wide collective bargaining agreement with the company. Starbucks Workers United is expected to return to the bargaining table with Starbucks this month.
For Mori, the struggle of Starbucks baristas represents the larger issues plaguing the world.
“That’s kind of a microcosm of what’s going on in America and around the world, with these billionaire elites grabbing more and more for themselves and cutting everybody else down,” Mori said.
“Baristas v. Billionaires” will play at the Atlanta Film Festival on April 28. The film will also have an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run at the Tara Theatre beginning on May 8.
