Before we were spoiled by such luxuries as a minimum wage and the weekend, the pioneers of the American labor movement were catching buckshot and truncheons for daring to ask for more than $5 for a 13-hour shift. Sadly, the legends of the union leaders who helped create the middle class are often lost in a history dominated by the narratives of the wealthy few who can afford to tell them. Detroit’s Reuther Brothers—who battled corrupt police, smear campaigns, assassination attempts, and the mob to help birth the United Auto Workers—have justly been saved from this fate by one of their grandsons. In Brothers on the Line, filmmaker Sasha Reuther lovingly traces the journey of his ancestors, painting them as part of the vanguard that helped transform Detroit from an impoverished labor camp in the 1920s to the American city with the highest median income by the 1950s. Scholastically narrated by Martin Sheen, the film has the partisan trappings of a family scrapbook, but transforms from a straightforward retelling into a touching homage to three working-class men who played an underappreciated role in every major social movement during 40 years of American history.