A Man of the People

Days after burying its matriarch, a small town in Brazil's rural sertão vanishes from every map, its water supply is cut, and a group of wealthy foreign mercenaries arrives to hunt its residents for sport — only to discover Bacurau has no intention of dying quietly.

Why it’s here: Punk in turning class rage into genre carnage — a marginalized town doesn't wait for institutions to save it, it arms itself and fights back on its own terms. Pedagogical in showing how disappearing a place from official maps is itself a form of violence, before a single shot is fired.

Twin sisters from a wealthy Nigerian family take very different paths in newly independent 1960s Nigeria, until the outbreak of the Biafran War forces politics into every corner of their private lives. Adapted from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel.

Why it’s here: Punk in refusing to let romance and betrayal upstage the Biafran genocide it's actually about — political catastrophe and private life collapse into each other. Pedagogical in showing how independence's promise curdled into ethnic war within a single generation.