Kopple, Barbara, 1946-

Barbara Kopple (born July 30, 1946) is an American film director known primarily for her documentary work.

Kopple grew up on a vegetable farm in Scarsdale, New York, the daughter of a textile executive. She studied psychology at Northeastern University, where she opted to make her first film instead of writing a term paper for a clinical psychology course. This experience began Kopple's interest in filmmaking. Kopple's political involvement started in college with her participation in antiwar protests against the Vietnam War.

She has won two Academy Awards, the first in 1976 for Harlan County, USA, about a Kentucky miners' strike, and the second in 1991 for American Dream, the story of the Hormel Foods strike in Austin, Minnesota in 1985-86.

Barbara Kopple also worked on two proposed film projects on the Peekskill Riots. In 1979 Koppel began, in conjunction with screenwriter Loring Mandel, to develop a feature-length drama, tentatively titled Peekskill, and partially funded by Twentieth Century Fox. This project appears to have been abandoned sometime after 1980 as a result of contract disputes with Mandel and lack of funding.

In 1983, Kopple contracted with Stanley "Bucky" Buchtal and Buckeye Entertainment to develop a second film based on the Peekskill Riots. They acquired a script titled Joe Glory, written by Alfred Slote. In 1997 Jeffrey Stanley was hired to rewrite the screenplay which was completed in 1998. In 1998 Stanley subsequently wrote a preview of the Paul Robeson Centennial Retrospective at the Film Forum for Time Out New York magazine which also mentions the Joe Glory script and Kopple. It appears that this project was also abandoned.

Kopple also directed Bearing Witness, a 2005 documentary about five women journalists stationed in combat zones during the Iraq War. She is known for her work with artists, including A Conversation With Gregory Peck as well as documentaries on Mike Tyson, Woody Allen, and Mariel Hemingway. She was on tour with the Dixie Chicks when lead singer Natalie Maines criticized the Iraq War. The film, Shut Up and Sing, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival. It went on to win a Special Jury Prize at the Chicago International Film Festival, and two Audience awards (Sydney Film Festival and Aspen Film Fest).

She has directed episodes of the television drama series Homicide: Life on the Street and Oz, winning a Directors Guild of America award for the former.