Capitalism: A Ghost Story

Billy Casper is a fifteen-year-old in a Yorkshire mining town, bullied at home and caned at school, expected to end up down the pit. Then he finds a young kestrel in a nest, steals it and trains it, and for the first time he is good at something. A teacher notices. The school doesn't care.

Why it’s here: The film is a case study in what school ignores. What's punk is that the one thing Billy loves is the thing no one has put on the syllabus. What's pedagogical is the scene where he describes falconry to his class, and the teacher listens. Pairs with Teacher, Summerhill School and The Class (suggested earlier this month). Note: Loach's later politics are publicly contested, including his 2021 expulsion from the Labour Party; the film predates all of it.

Six-year-old Moonee spends her summer in a purple motel outside Disney World, where her mother and a lot of other families live because they can't afford anything else. The kids run wild, the manager, played by Willem Dafoe, keeps an eye out, and the adults are always one bad week from the street. It's shot from a child's height, in bright colors.

Why it’s here: The film shows hidden homelessness through a kid's eyes, in the shadow of a theme park. What's punk is that it doesn't ask for pity and it doesn't clean up the mother. What's pedagogical is how clearly it shows what poverty looks like when it's called a motel. Pairs with Evicted and Poverty, by America.