Ada's Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay

In postwar Rome, Antonio finally gets a job pasting posters, but it requires a bicycle. When his is stolen on the first day, he and his young son Bruno spend the day searching the city. De Sica used non-professional actors and shot on the street, and the result is a simple story about what a bicycle means to a family.

Why it’s here: The film shows poverty as a trap with a clear shape. What's punk is that it refuses to make the thief a villain or the hero a saint. What's pedagogical is the father and son's walk, which shows a child watching an adult's dignity break. A foundation of neorealism, pairs with Children of Heaven and Rosetta. Note: subtitled and black and white; it's slow by modern standards but short.

A young teacher in Bhutan, who dreams of going to Australia to be a singer, is posted to Lunana, the most remote school in the world, a village at the top of the Himalayas with no electricity. He arrives expecting to quit. The children, the villagers and a yak he did not ask for change his mind about what a classroom is. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best International Feature.

Why it’s here: The film is a quiet argument that school is a person in a room who is paying attention. What's punk is how little it has: no power, no textbooks, a blackboard made from a wall. What's pedagogical is that it shows a teacher being taught by the place and kids who are not behind, they are elsewhere. Pairs with Teacher (Ashton-Warner), How Children Learn and Summerhill School. Note: it is gentle and not at all rebellious in tone; Bhutan's monarchy and its history with its Nepali-speaking minority are not part of the story.