Documentarian Barbara Kopple on Her Ground-Breaking New Film “Desert One”

Documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple’s films have tackled subjects ranging from labor strikes in her landmark Oscar-winners Harlan County, USA (1976) and American Dream (1990) to a feminist portrait of the Dixie Chicks in Shut Up and Sing (2006). After a groundbreaking, fifty-plus year career, she’s now made the action/adventure/war documentary Desert One, about the top-secret, dangerous mission by US special forces in 1980 to rescue 52 American hostages held in Iran.