Julia Reichert, Oscar-Winning ‘American Factory’ Documentarian, Dies at 76

Julia Reichert, whose 50-year career as a documentarian included a 2020 Oscar win for American Factory, has died after a battle with bladder cancer. She was 76.Reichert died Thursday night, her frequent collaborator Steven Bognar told The Hollywood Reporter. Despite undergoing chemotherapy ahead of her Oscar triumph, she attended the 2020 Academy Awards and walked to the stage with Bognar to accept their award.Long regarded as a godmother of the indie film industry, the director, producer and writer also received Oscar nominations for Union Maids (1976), Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists (1983) and The Last Truck: Closing of a Gm Plant (2009).Her first film, Growing Up Female (1971), was inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry by being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”American Factory, about a Chinese billionaire who reopens an abandoned Gm plant outside Dayton, Ohio, to make car windshields, shows Chinese ...