Synopsis

After leaving an abusive marriage, Josey Aimes returns to northern Minnesota with her children and takes a job at an iron mine. There, she encounters relentless sexual harassment and hostility from her male coworkers. With support from a small group of allies, Josey challenges the mine's powerful establishment and pursues a landmark class-action lawsuit that forces the community to confront its treatment of women.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film is a fictionalized adaptation of the real Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Company case, which became one of the first major successful sexual-harassment lawsuits in the United States.

• The screenplay was inspired by the 2002 nonfiction book Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law, written by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler.

• Josey Aimes was based primarily on Lois Jenson, who began working at the Eveleth mine in 1975 and filed her first lawsuit in 1984.

• The characters are fictionalized, but Glory Dodge was modeled partly on Pat Kosmach, one of the original plaintiffs in the case.

• Production filmed extensively on Minnesota's Iron Range, including Eveleth, Virginia, Chisholm, Hibbing, and Minneapolis. Mine interiors were filmed in a dormant mine in Silver City, New Mexico.

• Local Iron Range residents were recruited as extras, particularly for the film's union hall sequences.

• The cast and crew received mine-safety training and toured the New Mexico mine before filming. Cold Minnesota weather also created technical difficulties for the cameras and other equipment.

• The soundtrack makes notable use of several Bob Dylan songs, including "Tell Ol' Bill," "Lay Lady Lay," and "Sweetheart Like You."

• The film received two Academy Award nominations: one for the leading performance and another for the supporting performance.

• Despite its awards recognition and positive critical response, the film earned less worldwide than its reported production budget.