Elatsoe

Jess is a British Punjabi eighteen-year-old in West London who plays soccer better than anyone in her park, and her parents want her to learn to cook a full Indian dinner. She joins a women's team behind their backs, falls for her coach, and has to find a way to be both daughters at once. It's a comedy with a wedding, an ugly sports bra and a lot of heart.

Why it’s here: The film makes a joke out of the fight between family expectations and a girl's ambition, and the girl wins on her own terms. What's punk is that Jess isn't asked to choose between her people and her game. What's pedagogical is how it handles racism, sexism and homophobia in a form a family can watch together. Pairs with Persepolis and Funny Boy.

Harold is a death-obsessed rich kid who stages fake suicides to shock his mother. At funerals he meets Maude, a free-spirited woman nearly eighty who steals cars and replants trees. Their friendship, and then something more, turns a black comedy into a love story about being alive.

Why it’s here: The film laughs at the family, the church, the army and the psychiatrist, and takes the side of a boy who wants to feel something. What's punk is Maude, who refuses every authority and has the best lines in the film. What's pedagogical is the question it asks: what does it mean to live on purpose? Pairs with LAUGH & RESIST shelf books like Brain Droppings and Revolution for the Hell of It. Note: the romance between a teenager and a woman nearly eighty is played for comedy and puzzles some viewers, and some of Harold's fake deaths are dark.