Amina's Voice

In a West African village, a newborn boy named Kirikou speaks, walks and sets out to save his people from Karaba, the sorceress who has dried up their spring. The question he keeps asking is why she is so cruel. The answer changes how the story ends. It is based on West African folktales and runs about 70 minutes.

Why it’s here: The film turns a fairy tale about a tiny hero into a story about asking why the villain does what she does. What's punk is that Kirikou wins by understanding, not by force. What's pedagogical is the question itself, which is one a kid can carry out of the theatre. A good pick for a family watch. Note: the film is sometimes critiqued for its stereotyped portrayal of West Africa, written by a French director, and it includes non-sexual nudity.

London, 2027. No child has been born anywhere on Earth in eighteen years. Britain has sealed its borders, hunts refugees and keeps order with a police state, while the rest of the world falls apart. Theo, a jaded civil servant and former activist, is pulled into smuggling a young woman out of the country, because she is pregnant.

Why it’s here: The punk move is the refusal to explain: Cuarón builds a future that looks like a slightly worse present, with caged immigrants, suicide kits and bombings as background noise, and trusts you to notice. The long, unbroken takes put you inside the chaos instead of watching it from a safe seat. The pedagogy is in how it shows a society coming apart from the top: fear of outsiders sold as safety, resistance groups fighting each other, and hope treated as something fragile that has to be carried by hand. It is violent and bleak, so it suits adults and older teens, and its final note is hope, not despair.