The True Story of Ah Q

At Carver High, overachiever Tracy Flick is running unopposed for student body president, and her teacher, Mr. McAllister, decides he cannot let that happen. What starts as a dry school comedy turns into a story of a rigged contest, small cruelties, and the quiet ways adults twist power. A black comedy that treats a high-school vote like a presidential one.

Why it’s here: It's a film about who gets to run and who gets stopped. What's punk is a satire that lets neither the system nor its self-righteous teacher off the hook. What's pedagogical is Tracy herself, a character viewers read very differently depending on their age, which is its own lesson in bias. Pairs with Idiocracy, Dr. Strangelove and How Democracies Die. Note: R-rated; sexual content between an adult and a student, played for discomfort; teens and adults. English.

In a Zambian village, an eight-year-old girl is accused of witchcraft after a small incident and sent to a government-run witch camp, where the women are tied to spools of white ribbon so they can't fly away. She is made a tourist attraction and a courtroom tool. A deadpan satire from a Zambian-Welsh director about how belief becomes an industry.

Why it’s here: It's what a society does to someone who is made a spectacle. What's punk is the dry comedy of bureaucracy and tourism turning a child into an exhibit. What's pedagogical is the question it leaves: who benefits from the story? Pairs with Things Fall Apart, The Famished Road and Satanic Verses (suggested 10-22). Note: dark comedy, with a child at the center and no easy rescue; Nyoni drew on real witch camps in Ghana. English, Bemba and Nyanja with subtitles.