1968–1970: WYSO FM

In 1968, Reichert became partners in life and creative work with Jim Klein, who introduced her in 1969 to the Antioch student radio station, WYSO FM.  Reichert began to learn audio recording, tape editing, interviewing, and storytelling within a time frame. She worked an Antioch co-op job at WYSO in the Summer of 1969, and in her course evaluation, WYSO manager Tim Mabee wrote:  "Julia developed practically on her own initiative the WYSO news program. She trained and directed about ten students and several outsiders in the writing, compiling, taping, interviewing, and announcing involved."

In 1969, Reichert created and hosted "The Single Girl" on WYSO, possibly the first openly feminist radio program in the United States. Reichert later retitled the show "Sisters, Brothers, Lovers, Listen," feeling the word 'girl' was disrespectful.^[7]

1970–1972: Growing Up Female and the creation of New Day Films

Produced in 1970 and released in 1971, Growing Up Female chronicles the socialization of women at six different ages, blending interview and cinema verité material. The film is the first feature documentary of the modern Women's Liberation Movement and was selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry in 2011. The film was directed and produced by Reichert and Jim Klein.

Frustrated with unfair distribution offers for Growing Up Female, Reichert and Klein decided to distribute the film themselves. They coined the name New Day Films. While attending the Flaherty Seminar in 1971, they met filmmaker Amalie R. Rothschild, who also had a feminist film, It Happens to Us, and soon thereafter Liane Brandon, director of Anything You Want to Be, also a pioneering feminist documentary. The four filmmakers founded New Day Films as a filmmaker-owned democratically run film distribution cooperative. New Day Films recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, and now has over 140 filmmaker-owners, distributing over 300 films.

1974–1984: Union Maids and Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists

Reichert and Klein's collaboration continued with Methadone – An American Way of Dealing, released in 1974, and then turned towards history, teaming up with Miles Mogulescu to make Union Maids.  

Inspired by the book "Rank & File – Personal Histories By Working Class Organizers" by Alice & Staughton Lynd, the film is a pioneering oral history/archival documentary telling the rank-and-file story of three union activists. Union Maids premiered in 1976, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1977 and has been in active distribution ever since. Historian Howard Zinn called Union Maids "the best film on labor history I have ever seen."

Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists, produced & directed by Reichert & Klein in the late 1970s and early 1980s, premiered at the Telluride and New York Film Festivals in 1983. It had a successful theatrical run, playing for ten weeks in New York and San Francisco/Bay Area, 7 weeks in Boston & Seattle, and 5 weeks in Los Angeles. The film screened theatrically in nearly 100 US cities and was nominated in 1984 for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.  Seeing Red remains in active distribution, and was recently restored by IndieCollect for new theatrical screenings.

1985–1996: From documentary to narrative and back again

After Seeing Red, Reichert wrote, produced, and directed the independent fiction feature Emma & Elvis (1992) and produced the independent fiction feature The Dream Catcher (1999), directed by Ed Radtke. In 1997 she teamed up with her new partner Steven Bognar to begin filming the stories of children fighting cancer at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, in a film that would become A Lion in the House.  

Edited from over 525 hours of material filmed across six years and produced in partnership with ITVS, A Lion in the House tells the stories of five children and teenagers, their parents, siblings, and caregivers as they struggle to navigate childhood cancer and all its challenges. The film, a co-production with ITVS, the Independent Television Service, premiered as a two-night primetime common-carriage PBS special on the series Independent Lens. The film, executive produced by Sally Jo Fifer, premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Documentary Competition, was nominated for Best Documentary Feature in the Film Independent Spirit Awards, and won the Primetime Emmy for 'Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking' in 2007.

2008-2015: The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant

In June 2008, following the announcement that Dayton's General Motors would be shuttering their Moraine Assembly Truck and Bus plant - a major employer and financial lifeblood of the community - Reichert and Bognar began production on what would become The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant. The duo and their team interviewed hundreds of the plant's 3,000-plus workers. Denied access to film inside the plant, they interviewed workers at the entrance and exits to the plant's property, and supplied digital cameras to workers to covertly film, including footage of the last vehicles to be assembled there. The film is a production of HBO Documentary Films, executive produced by Lisa Heller & Sheila Nevins. The film premiered at the 2009 Telluride Film Festival and was nominated in 2010 for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject).

In 2012, Reichert and Bognar produced and directed the short documentary Sparkle, which followed legendary Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC) dancer Sheri Sparkle' Williams following what could have been a career-ending injury. The film, executive produced by Gita Pullapilly and Aron Gaudet, won the "Best Documentary Short" audience awards at the AFI SilverDocs and New Orleans Film Festivals.  The film was broadcast on the PBS special LIFECASTERS.  

In 2012, Julia Reichert returned to her roots, beginning a two-year collaboration with WYSO 91.3 FM, where she learned many aspects of nonfiction storytelling in the 1960s and 70s. Reichert and Bognar teamed with WYSO staff and volunteers to create ReInvention Stories (2012–14). A project of the national storytelling initiative Localore and in collaboration with web innovators Zeega, ReInvention Stories is a documentary project telling stories of Daytonians forced to reinvent their lives and professions in the wake of the 2008 economic crash. The stories came in the form of WYSO radio pieces, short films, a photography exhibit, and an interactive transmedia website.  The project was supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, among others. ReInvention Stories was featured in the interactive media section of the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.  

In 2015, Reichert and Bognar collaborated with the Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music to create the documentary short Making Morning Star, a behind-the-scenes look at the workshopping and development of a new American opera by composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist William M. Hoffman.

2015-2020: American Factory

In 2015, it was announced that the former General Motors plant in Moraine would be occupied by Chinese windshield manufacturer Fuyao, injecting a wave of new jobs back into the community. Reichert and Bognar were granted access to both the Ohio and China factories, as well as access to the company's chairman; they filmed from 2015 to 2017. Her nephew Jeff Reichert & Julie Parker Benello became producers on the film, and Jeff Reichert became one of the film's primary cinematographers, along with Erick Stoll, Aubrey Keith, Julia Reichert & Steven Bognar.  The film became a production of Participant Media in late 2016, and Diane Weyermann and Jeff Skoll became Executive Producers.  

The film's editor Lindsay Utz completed editing in late 2018, and composer Chad Cannon completed his original score in early 2019. American Factory premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019, where it won the award for Best Director, U.S. Documentary. Shortly after its premiere, the film was acquired by Netflix and Higher Ground Productions. Following a successful film festival tour, it was nominated for and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Following the premiere of American Factory, a traveling retrospective of Julia Reichert's films was curated by the Wexner Center for the Arts and was launched at the Museum of Modern Art in May 2019, before traveling to other US cities.

2020-2021: 9to5: The Story of a Movement

Long in production, Reichert and Bognar completed their film 9to5: The Story of a Movement, a real-life activist movement that inspired Jane Fonda to produce the feature narrative film 9 to 5. The film was scheduled to premiere at the 2020 South by Southwest Film Festival until the pandemic shut down the entire festival. The film was screened at the AFI Docs, Mill Valley, and DOC NYC film festivals.  

The film features interviews with many of 9to5's members as well as actor and activist Jane Fonda. The film premiered on PBS on their Independent Lens series in early 2021 and was nominated for a Peabody Award in 2022.

During the height of the pandemic, Reichert & Bognar were approached by a neighbor, comedian Dave Chappelle, to film a series of distanced, outdoor comedy performances Chappelle held in their town of Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Following a full Summer of performances, which included special guests such as Jon Stewart, Tiffany Haddish, and Chris Rock, Bognar and Reichert produced and directed two films - 8:46, which premiered online via Netflix in 2020, and Dave Chappelle: Live in Real Life, which closed the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival to a sold-out audience of over 6,000 at Radio City Music Hall.