Films that portray the way in which ordinary people have a right to choose public policies and can bring about political change by making officeholders accountable to the people.
A TRAITOR AND A SPY FEATURES TRUTH AND COURAGE In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus (Louis Garrel) is convicted of treason in France and sentenced to live out his life on Devil’s Island off the coast of French Guiana. When the verdict is read before a large assembly of the army, his medals are stripped from […]
A Traitor and a Spy Read More »
A BILL BECOMES A LAWIN LILLY The first major piece of legislation under the Obama presidency was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed on January 29, 2009. Lilly explains who the bill was named after and how her situation—a woman receiving less pay than men for the same work—catapulted into a major amendment to
NO OTHER LAND PHOTOGRAPHS ONGOING HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS A docudrama, No Other Land films Israelis as they forcibly take over land in the West Bank occupied by Palestinians for centuries. Filming starts in 2019 by showing how 1,000 Palestinians live in standard housing within Masafer Yatta, a group of 20 Palestinian villages in the mountainous
KIDNAPPED: THE ABDUCTION OF EDGARDO MORTARA FEATURES ITALIAN HISTORY Director Marco Bellocchio has filmed a history of Italy in which the fate of one person—Edgardo Mortara (played at age 6 by Enea Sala, as an adult by Leonardo Maltese)—galvanized opposition to rule over parts of the country known then as the Papal States. During the
AURORA’S SUNRISE Graphically Explains the Armenian Genocide A biopic about Arshaluys Mardiganian, Aurora’s Sunrise is also a biopic and mini-critique of the previously forgotten film Auction of Souls (1919). The latter film is a story (though she was renamed Aurora to sell to an American audience), of a 14-year-old who is evicted from her home
CHEVALIER FEATURES WHITE SUPREMACY Historical information about Joseph Bologne has been pieced together, and the film Chevalier has a lot of interesting subplots that are doubtless fictional. But the message of the film is one of the most fascinating of 2023 and seems very timely indeed, with White males infuriated by an upstart Black whom
In 1816, Argentina declared independence but had a checkered political history until 1983, when a military junta stepped aside, and Argentina has been a democracy ever since. One reason the military relinquished power was that they lost public support in the “dirty war,” when an estimated 30,000 citizens disappeared, some dropping some into the ocean
HIVE DEPICTS HOW WIVES OF MIAS CAN BEST SURVIVE Directed by Blerta Bashollim, Hive reminds filmviewers that during 1999 Serbian forces slaughtered about 100 Albanian residents of the town of Krusha in Kosovo. Their remains are a mystery, especially to wives who were therefore impoverished. Two decades have passed, and the women stand in front
IRRESTIBLE PROVES THAT POLITICS IS ABOUT MONEY Jon Stewart of Comedy Central fame, in deciding to make a film to provoke the elitist Democratic Party, focused on a fictional small town in Wisconsin in Irresistible, though the letters RESIST stand out on the screen. Filming was actually in Rockmart, Georgia, and the story was inspired by the